Corporate Blogging

Do you know what corporate blogging is?

A corporate weblog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. There are many types of corporate blogging, which are Internal Blogs, External Blogs and CEO Blogs. An internal blog, generally accessed through the corporation's Intranet, is a weblog that any employee can view. An external blog is a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. It is often used to announce new products and services (or the end of old products), to explain and clarify policies, or to react on public criticism on certain issues.

Example of the corporate blog implementation and its effect

Visit Tampa Bay is an example of corporate blog. It has been blogging for seo (search engine optimization) for a few months and each month they have had the opportunity to gain new clients through this program. They are doing this by winning organic searches on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. In fact, every one of their keywords is ranking in at least one of these search engines.

To view their blog, click the link below.
http://blog.visittampabay.com/blog/visittampabay

Advantages of corporate blogging

• Leaders can communicate directly with their customers, suppliers and investors and employees.
  
• Blogs can help organization develop stronger relationships and brand loyalty with its customers, as they interact with the 'human face' of the organization through blogs.


• Sharing their ideas freely in an honest voice brings the blogging companies new connections and generates trust which will lead to business opportunities galore.
  
• If your blog has a positive effect on your company’s reputation then it is very beneficial to your career.

Disadvantages of corporate blogging

• Blogs make many organizations look like disorganizations, with multiple tones and opinions. Contrary to what some might think, the average customer prefers it if the organization they are about to purchase from is at least somewhat cohere
  
• blogs are easy to start and hard to maintain. Writing coherently is one of the most difficult and time-consuming tasks for a human being to undertake. So, far from blogs being a cheap strategy, they are a very expensive one, in that they eat up time.


• It can be tricky to drag public comment out of a company without first routing through the sanitizing filter of a press office.

How to prevent E-auction fraud?

E-auction, also called procurement auction, reverse auction , sourcing event, e-sourcing or eRA, is a tool used in industrial business-to-business procurement. It is a type of aution in which the role of the buyer and seller are reversed, with the primary objective to drive purchase prices downward. In an ordinary auction or known as a forward auction, buyers compete to obtain a good or service. In a reverse auction, sellers compete to obtain business. It is a tool used by many purchasing and supply management organizations for spend management, as part of strategic sourcing and overall supply management activities.
Buyers, sellers, and market makers should adhere to auction rules and industry codes of conduct for the use of reverse auctions, if they exist. Problems arise when one or more parties fail to conform to auction rules. This can range from simple cries of "foul" to litigation.

As a smart consumer, you should know how to protect yourself when you are doing E-auction? So, what is our concerns when involving in E-auction? The well known and the largest Internet auctioneer is eBay which has introduced several measures in an effort to reduce fraud. The following are prevention to e-auction fraud:

• User identity verification such in IC number, driver’s license number or date of birth. For example, verified eBay user, the voluntary program, encourages users to supply eBay with information for online verification. While users are also adviced to save all transactions information as a backup document to yourself and it will be useful when fraud are occurred.


• Authentication service. It is to determine whether an item is genuine and described appropriately. It difficult to perform because their training and experience, experts can detect counterfeits based on subtle detail.


• Grading services which is a way to determine the physical condition of an item, such as ‘poor quality’ or ‘mint condition’. Different item have different grading systems. For example, some are graded from A1 to F1, or by ranking from 1 to 5, while coins are graded from poor to perfect uncirculated.


• Feedback forum. It allows buyers and sellers to build up their online trading reputations. It provides user with ability to comment on their experiences with other.


• Escrow services. Both buyers and sellers in a deal are protected with an independent third party. Buyer mails the payment to escrow services which verifies the payment and alerts the seller when everything checks out. An example of a provider of online escrow services s i-Escrow. Users also should not giving out their personal privacy information until you have thoroughly checked out the seller and the escrow service.


• Appraisal services which use a variety of methods to appraise items. It includes expert assessment of authenticity and condition, and reviewing what comparable items have sold for in the marketplace in recent months.


• Physical inspection. It can eliminate many problems especially for collectors’ item. But in fact, this is not practicable due to some limitations.


• Item verification which is a way of confirm he identity and evaluate the condition of an item. Third parties will evaluate and identify an item through a variety of means. For example, some collectors have their item “DNA tagged” for identification purpose. It provides a way of tracking an item if it charges ownership in future.


• Non-payment punishment. In order to protect sellers, a friendly warning for first-time nonpayment. A sterner warning is for second-time offense, with a 30 day suspension for a third offense and an indefinite suspension for a fourth offense.

Further reading about prevention of e-auction fraud:

1. Prevention methods for e-auction
2. What's Internet Auction Fraud, And How Do I Prevent It?

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

What is E-government and how far is its implementation?

E-Government, also known as e-gov, digital government, online government refers to the use of internet technology as a platform for exchanging information, providing services and transacting with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. E-government is one of the seven MSC flagship launched in Malaysia. Current application of e-government implemented in Malaysia included e-Filing, renewing road tax and driving license online, KWSP’s i-Akaun, E-Perolehan, employment opportunities and more. The vision of government to launch e-government services is to focuses on effectively and efficiently delivering services from the government to the people of Malaysia, enabling the government to become more responsive to the needs of its citizens. It also provides citizens and organizations with more convenient access.

The 7 pilot projects of the Electronic Government Flagship Application that has been implementing so far are:

1. Project Monitoring System (SPP II)

2. Human Resource Management

Information System (HRMIS)

3. Generic Office Environment (GOE)

4. Electronic Procurement (EP)

5. Electronic Services (E-Services)

6. Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)

7. E-Syariah

The myGovernment Portal had been established and acts as the one-stop source of Malaysian government information and services for the citizens. This website serves different categories of users ranging from citizens, business, governments, and non-citizens. Besides, it also provides the pathway for its users to make enquiry, get the information of government job vacancies, complaints about their dissatisfaction and so on.

Common problems encountered by consumers:

• Many citizens in Malaysia are reluctant to transact or utilize the applications of e-Government through internet due to the risk of inaccurate data transferred, potential fraudulent, phishing, and stolen of privacy data and so on.
• Many consumers do not know how to use the services provided as there is no manual guide which could assist them in the way transacting over internet.
• Public are not aware of the e-Government services provided as there is lack of extensive advertisements and promotions regarding the services. Most of them still using the traditional method especially those computer illiterate.
• Do not have the accessibility over internet due to the digital divide especially those in rural area or poor families that do not posses internet access at home

Strategies to encourage more residences to use e-Government applications

• Increase the awareness the of e-Government application by publishing and advertising publicly. (e.g. provide user manual guide, advertise on promotion board/television, setting up help desks and so on.
• Increase citizens and businesses units’ willingness to adopt and utilize these services by educate and introduce the functions of e-Government on how to use the services provided. (e.g. renew driving license)
• Enhance security and confidence of the existing and potential citizens by constantly maintaining the server and keep upgrading the safety issues arisen through advance technology and law governance.
• Set up kiosks at public area such as shopping complex, government agencies which will increase the users’ accessibility.

A review on a post on Legal from My E-Commerce blog -- New rules for cyber cafes soon

After reading the post of “New rules for cyber cafes soon”, I think it might be a good idea to enforce such rules to have a control on the operating hours and businesses of cyber cafes. Besides, the activities of those who appear in cyber cafes could be controlled under the new rules, especially for teenagers as they always go cyber cafes for gaming. Once they start gaming, they can hardly get out of the gaming world. As such, they consume most of their time in cyber cafes instead of putting efforts on their studies or doing other healthy activities. The new rules can also prevent those who going cyber cafes from surfing porn sites, gambling and so on.

However, the enforcement of such rules might significantly affect the businesses of cyber cafes. Since the activities of customers are being controlled and they could not do whatever they want in the cyber cafes, customers will feel that it is meaningless for them and might stop going to cyber cafes especially for those who always go for gaming. This may lead to the closing down of most of the cyber cafes in our country.

In my opinion, the enforcement of the new rules for cyber cafes still considered a good one so that our nations can go for a healthier lifestyles rather than spending their time doing unhealthy activities in the cyber cafes. But the point is the businesses of cyber cafes will surely be affected.

The application of pre-paid cash card for consumers

What is Pre-paid Cash Card?
It is a card that has monetary value preloaded which is a limit that a consumer can use so one can have budget over his spending by loading reasonable amount of money onto the card. The value in the card will reduce each time the consumer uses it and the consumer can reload the card anytime.

Examples of pre-paid cash card
Touch 'n Go is a prepaid cash card in Malaysia. It can be used to pay toll fares at highways, for major public transports, selected parking sites, and so on. Consumer can reload the card at ATM, train stations, toll plazas, etc with the range from RM20 to RM500. Touch 'n Go makes it convenient and efficient for consumers to pay for low value but high frequency transactions. Touch 'n Go can also be used in selected retail outlets like Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, 7-Eleven, Carefour, etc.


Octopus card is prepaid cash card used in Hong Kong. It is primarily used to pay public transport fares for convenience. The application of Octopus card is extended for purchases in retail outlets. Consumers can also access to buildings and schools and identify themselves by using this card. It has made their daily life easier.

Benefits of pre-paid cash card
- Convenient
- Efficient
- Safer than cash
- Avoid from bringing small change
- Prevent from long queue

Wikipedia links for:
- Touch 'n Go
- Octopus Card

Mobile payment system in Malaysia: Its potentials and consumers' adoption strategies

Nowadays, most of the people are using mobile payment. What is mobile payment? It is basically a point-of-sale payment made through a mobile device, such as a cellular telephone, a smartphone, or a personal digital assistant (PDA). Mobile payment also referred to as mobile web payment or WAP billing.By using mobile payment, a person with a wireless device could pay for items in a store or settle a restaurant bill without interacting with any staff member, it can also be used to purchase any number of digital or hard goods, such as music, videos, ringtones, games, wallpapers, books, magazines, tickets and other hard goods. Examples of mobile payment are mobile ticketing, mobile banking and much more.

Potentials of mobile payment

• Improved user convenience
  Mobile payment provides a more convenient way to pay for their bills, just by a few clicks on mobile device, the user may be able to make payment through their mobile. Instead of make payment by going to the particular place, as the mobile payment is operating 24 hours everyday, the user can make payment at anytime, anywhere they want, they can even make payment either at home or their office. Thus, this can eliminates the hassle to queue up just to pay for the bills and therefore can save user’s time.
  
  
• Security, privacy and trust
  Mobile payment ensures private and secure transmissions. By using mobile payment, the personal details and payment history of the user are protected. Moreover, users account is protected from hacker or terrorists because the users need to key in passwords in order to login to their account.
  
  
• Simplicity
  User does not need to go through sophisticated steps in order to make payment by their mobile device. They just have to activate their telephones by logging into websites. After registering their mobile telephone numbers, they can enjoy the services, after registering it, there just a few clicks and they are able to make payment through their mobile device.
  

Consumers’ Adoption strategies

Most common mobile payment system used is mobile banking; most busy working adults usually use mobile banking to pay for their bills, such as electricity bill and water bill. Besides, they also use mobile banking to make transaction and pay for their credit card debts, by doing so; they can save their time because they don’t need to queue up at the bank.

Credit Card debts: Cause and Prevention

Are you a credit card holder?
First of all, before we talk in depth about credit card debts we should know what credit card is. Credit card is a system of payment named after the small plastic card issued to users of the system in which the issuer lends money to the consumer or the user to be paid later to the merchant. A credit card allows the consumer to 'revolve' their balance, at the cost of having interest charged. Most credit cards are issued by local banks or credit unions, and are the same shape and size, as specified by the ISO 7810 standard.


Credit card holder is the holder of the card used to make a purchase or payment or the consumer of the card. It cannot be ignored that credit really bring convenient to the consumer but at the same time it also comes along with the hidden problems that might be easily overlook by the card holder especially debts. Credit card debt is an example of unsecured consumer debt accessed through credit cards. So, to be a smart consumer of credit card, you should always keep track to the transactions that you made by using credit card in order not to be in debts.


Why credit card debts??
It was reported that there is increasingly growth of bankruptcies which majority caused by unmanageable credit card debts. Debt results when a client of a credit card company purchases an item or service through the card system. Debt accumulates and increases via interest and penalties when the consumer does not pay the company for the money he or she has spent.


Cause: Missing Payments or Late Payments. The fastest way to get into credit difficulties is by not repaying the minimum payment required or only makes the minimum payment of the charges of your credit card. Even worse, cardholder will be forced to go bankrupt. The results of not paying the debt on time are that the banks, credit card companies, or other financial institutions is a late payment penalty will be charged and reporting of the late payment to credit rating agencies which will affect the user’s credit rating. Additionally, the late payment penalty itself will increase the amount of debt the consumer has.
Prevention: Set up a Direct Debit for the minimum amount and pay off the debts as much as possible of the remaining balance to keep it low.

Cause: Spend, Spend, and Spend. In fact, please do not, do not and do not do this! Making payment or spending money on credit card is borrowing money from the banks or the credit card companies. It is a debt and consumers must repay it at some point of time. In other words, you are spending your own future money! Sometimes consumers might be not realize about that and obtain a purchase which actually cannot afford by them. Thus, it is easily make themselves in debts when they are not noticed that they are spending out of their financial ability.
Prevention: Use the card to obtain a purchase that you can afford provided you can pay off the cost over time or spend by using a debit card. Only spend what you can afford!

Cause: The End of the Honeymoon. It is commonly for nowadays credit card companies offer credit cardholder with 0% interest rate in order to attract more consumers to apply for a card. But, every special offer must come to an end. The credit card companies will transfer from 0% balance to low introductory interest rates. When the special rate ends, the interest rates will shoot up, and a small debt can grow rapidly, particularly if only the minimum repayments are being made.
Prevention: There is no point in being loyal to a card that has outlived its special rate, you can just pay off the outstanding balance and get a new card with a lower rate for your purchases. Try to make a note of the expiry date of all special deals to make sure that all transactions go through before interest becomes due.

Cause: Holding Bunches of Card. It is advised that not to hold more than 8 cards at any one time as this will adversely affect credit ratings. Besides, when you have more than 1 credit card on hand, you will be easily overspend your money and get yourself in trouble with huge debts. By carrying too many credit cards with you at a time, the cards might in danger of being stolen or lost and being used by somebody unknown. Thus when these happened, you might found that you are horribly in debt with the credit card companies.
Prevention: Clear any outstanding balances and cancel your credit cards formally which are no longer used. It is also advised that shoppers to only carry one card at a time to reduce the risk of your card be stolen or lost.

A Little Tips…
You can often detect warning signs of being in too much debt long before your receive the collection notices. If more than 2 or 3 danger signs apply to you should consider getting some help with your finances.

• You have begun charging essentials like food and daily expenses to your credit cards.


• You make only minimum payments on your charge card accounts each month.


• You are at the limit of your credit cards, or have too many credit cards.


• You are unsure how much you owe creditors.
  

Just let me stop here for this topic, and hope that everyone of you can make use of it. Ciao!

~SiuLing~


Further more

• Credit Card Debt


• Head into the new millenniumwithout that credit card debt


• The Truth About Credit Card Debt

Electronic currency

Do you know what electronic currency is?

Electronic money is also known as e-money, electronic cash, electronic currency, digital money, digital cash or digital currency refers to money and scrips which is exchanged only electronically.‘E’ is the first letter of the word ‘electronic’ and ‘currency’ is a money system. You can think of e-currency as Internet money. Just like in normal everyday monetary currencies, electronic currencies are also varied. Each one of them is backed by an underlying monetary currency or in some cases, even valuable or precious metals such as gold.

Benefits of using e-currency service on internet

The e-currency enables its users and merchants to conduct e-commerce services as in buying and selling products and services via internet. It also provides both the buyers and merchant the convenient way to send and receive the payment just by clicking the confirm button and the deal is done.

E-currency services allow people not to use their credit cards while making payment through internet as it exposure the card’s holder the risk of card information being known by the merchants who they do not know well and most likely are located far away from the users.

Banks also benefited from the application of e-currency which enables its customers send money from one place to another without using cash. Using e-currency, customers can pay bills, change money from one account to another, and pay for things they want to buy such as food, a car, a television or a service such as Forex Trading.

Example of corporation that provide E-micropayment systems:

Paystone Technologies Corp

Paystone Technologies Corp. founded in 2001, is a private Internet payment and money transfer company keen to providing secure, easy, real time Internet transactions. It also provides an inexpensive online payment method without the risk of chargebacks from fraudulent credit card use. Paystone can efficiently handle small financial transactions (micropayments) as low as $0.25 which would also beneficial to its users.

The three features that provided by Paystone Technologies Corp. are:

1. The Online personal account provides individual with a secure way to buy products online or send and receive money real time. Besides, it also allows the individual to get their income which generated from their website quickly, easily and inexpensively. Furthermore, Paystone also provides an email money transfer option which the account holder can send funds to the email address of anyone in selected countries around the world. The recipient of the funds just need to signs up for Paystone in order to cash withdraw the money from their local bank account.
2. The Merchant accounts and micropayments realise the full benefits of Paystone solution to maximize the revenue of large online merchant by reducing the cost, limitation, risks of using credit cards and solve some other e-commerce issues.
3. The Group Pay Account is an efficient, easily implemented solution for companies who pay a larger numbers of individuals for commissions, payroll, rebates or incentives. Group pay also eliminates the high cost of issuing, disbursing and enable the users to manage their cheques in more efficient way.

How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

In nowadays world, almost all computer users are internet users, such as you and I also are users of internet. Internet is a public network which connecting computers throughout the world and this is the reason why people always say that internet is a borderless world. As a user of internet, it is unavoidable that we might need to register at some websites in order to become member of those websites or to subscribe the services provided. When during the registration process, it might be necessary for us to fill in some personal information to complete it. This has exposed the users of internet to the risk of losing their privacy or said to become the victims of identity theft.


Since today’s world is a keep on seeking for advancement, impossible is nothing, that’s mean everything can be happened and sometimes may be out of your imagination. Thus, it is important for internet users to always be alert and beware when you are asked to submit your personal data which including your name, address, contact number, gender, date of birth, e-mail address etc. and especially your financial data such as credit card’s number or bank account’s number when doing online funding transactions.

It is to be informed that identity theft is one of the nation’s fastest growing crimes. In 2003 alone, it was reported that 9.9 million people were victims of identity theft. Therefore, in order to protect ourselves from becoming one of the victims of identity theft, it is necessary for us to learn about how to safeguard our personal and financial data.

So, what can we do?

• Do not reveal any personal information or particularly passwords to anyone. Please always remember to log out properly after visit any website that contains privacy data to ensure that nobody can access into your personal information especially Financial Data Center before leaving the website.


• Close the browser window when using a public computer. You can avoid your personal information and mail reading by other users by doing this particularly when using a computer that shared in public places such as school computer lab, Cyber cafe etc.


• Avoid using passwords that are easily to be guessed. For example, your date of birth, contact number, identity card number and etc. This kind of information are not encouraged to write down or recorded in whichever type of medium and never carry it along with you in your wallet or handbag.


• Install antispyware and antivirus software. Some popular antivirus software such as AVG, BitDefender and Kaspersky are commonly used by computer users currently in trend. Antivirus helps to protect personal information, financial data and etc to be hacked or stolen by other users.


• Using access control mechanism to limit actions that can be performed by other users. Web owner can determine who can use the network resource and what resource can be used with the help of the mechanism to certain the most information or data that can be accessed by different authorised users.


• Keep your card close. No matter when you are out shopping or eating out in any places, you should watch how personnel handle your card when making payment and never ever left or throw the receipt away in a public place but take it with you to home.
  
• Pay attention when using an ATM. When you are doing transactions by using ATM, you should always take notice to those people who are a little bit too interested with your transaction and cover the keypad when entering your PIN to avoid others from knowing it.
• Keep credit cards to a minimum. It is advised that not to hold a number of credit cards in hand and keep only the credit card which actually use while other credit cards which no longer to be used should be destroyed appropriately by shredding them.

As conclusion, it is important for us to build up a community which is willing to work together to help to prevent personal and financial data leakage to identity theft and always be a smart users when using internet so to keep ourselves from suffer of advancement of technology.

For further details, try to have a look on Understand and Cope with Identity Theft, Smart Card Alliance Releases Security, Privacy Guidelines and Identity Theft Affects Internet Marketers and Business Owners Too!

Even more about AVG (AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0.1), BitDefender, and Kaspersky!

~SiuLing~

The application of 3rd party certification programme in Malaysia

3rd party certification is the verification of the public or private key’s holder by a trusted third party known as Certificate Authority to ensure that the web sites are genuine by using digital certificate. It authenticates web sites, individuals, and software companies so that consumers or people using the websites can trust and rely on them.



3rd party certification programme has become increasingly important in the world of internet. The most famous 3rd party certification programme is VeriSign. Another 3rd party certification programme is MSC Trustgate, which is an affiliate of VeriSign incorporated in year 1999, and it is Malaysia’s premier licensed Certification Authority.

Why VeriSign?

The Internet Infrastructure of VeriSign enables confidential information or important data to be delivered across the net safely so that the users can do their transactions with confidence. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate encrypts sensitive information when people doing online transactions. Sometimes, some web sites have encrypted https connection where the users can see “https” in the URL.

A Certificate Authority verifies the identity of a certificate owner with the unique, authenticated information contained in the certificate. When a user points to a secured domain, SSL handshake will authenticate the web site and the user. The user can see the authenticated organization name when he clicks on the closed padlock in the browser window or certain SSL trust marks, such as the VeriSign Secured Seal.

The authenticated organization name is even prominently displayed in high-security browsers and the address bar will turn green when an Extended Validation SSL Certificate is detected. If the information does not match or the certificate has expired, an error message or warning will be displayed.

I think the implementation of 3rd party certification programme can extensively improve customers trust since the web sites they are dealing with are certified as genuine web sites. This enables them to do transactions and transfer their information without much worry that their information will be revealed by impostors. Therefore, it is essential for the implementation of such programme in the e-commerce world.

The threat of online security: How safe is our data?

If you think no one would be interested in your personal data, think again. The reality is that anyone can be a victim of data theft like your financial accounts, your credit card records and information, your identify information and your other personal asset. In fact, according to a source which is from the International Federation Trade Commission body, there are more than 50 million victims every year worldwide. It is often difficult to know how thieves obtained their victims' personal information, and while it definitely can happen offline, in many cases start when online data is stolen.

There are dishonest people all around and in the Internet. But you can't judge an online operator's trustworthiness by the look in the eye. It's remarkably simple for online scammers to impersonate a legitimate business, so you need to know whom you're dealing with. If you're shopping online, check out the seller before you buy. A legitimate business or individual seller should give you a physical address and a working telephone number at which they can be contacted in case you have problems.

When it comes to crimes like information theft, you can't entirely control whether you will become a victim. But here are some of the ways that you can minimize your risk while you’re online.

If you're asked for your personal data like your name, email or home address, phone number, bank account numbers, Socso or EPF number. Learn how it is going to be used, and how it will be protected, before you share it.

Don't open unsolicited or unknown email messages. If you do get an email or pop-up message asking for personal information, don't reply or click on the link in the message. Most importantly, do not to respond to solicitations for your personal or financial information.

Example of pop-up message

If you believe there may be a need for such information by a company with whom you have an account or placed an order, contact that company directly in a way you know to be genuine. Never send your personal information via email because email is not a secure transmission method. Most email programs have email filters built-in to the application. Set your email filters, so you can limit the amount of unsolicited email you receive.

If you are shopping online, be careful about providing your personal or financial data through any company's website without taking measures to reduce the risk. There are some indicators that show vendors have taken measures to secure their sites such as a lit lock icon on the browser's status bar or a website URL that begins "https:" (the "s" stands for "secure"). Unfortunately, no indicator is foolproof; some scammers have forged security icons.

Example of webisite where data transfered are secured and protected

Read website privacy policies. They should explain what personal information the website collects, how the information is used, and whether it is provided to third parties. The privacy policy also should tell you whether you have the right to see what information the website has about you, whether they provide or sell your information to third parties, and what security measures the company takes to protect your information. If you don't see a privacy policy or if you can't understand it, please do not proceed with it.

No system in this world is completely secure. If you have important files stored on your computer, copy them onto a removable backup or disc, and store them in a secure place in a different place or building than your computer. If a different location isn't practical, consider encryption software. Encryption software scrambles a message or a file in a way that can be reversed only with a specific password. At the same time, make sure you keep your original software start-up disks handy and accessible for use in the event of an operating system crash.

Example of encryption software

Review on a post on Internet Security

There are many cases of internet threats such as viruses attacked, hacking, cyber terrorism, spamming, etc happened around us. It was found that there are a total of 711, 912 new malicious code threats found in 2007. In total todate so far, Symantec already detected 1,122,311 malware. This showed that almost 2/3 of the malware were created in 2007 alone. On the other hand, some security firms also reported a significant increase in the number of viruses online. Moreover, A study from the research firm Gartner suggested that there is a sharp increase of identity theft related incidents since 2003, there are facts showing that there is increase in identity theft, 15 millions Americans were identity theft victims in mid 2005 - mid2006, besides, The average loss of a case of identity theft was US$ 3,257 (2006) and US$ 1,408 (2005) and Only 61% of the loss fund was recovered in 2006.

As we can see there are many cases of internet threats which happened around us, therefore we need internet security to protect our computer. What is internet security? It is basically the prevention of unauthorized access or damage to computer systems via internet access. Internet Security is very important nowadays in order to protect against the internet threats and vulnerabilities. On the other words, it involves making sure that your computer and data are safe from these dangerous software: adware, crackers, hackers, malware, spyware, trojan horses, worms, and viruses.

How to protect our computer being attack from virus? We need to install antivirus software, this software helps us to identify, neutralize or eliminate malicious software, it also used to combat a wide range of threats, including worms, phishing attacks, rootkits, trojan horses and other malware. Beside antivirus, a firewall can also help us blocks all "roads and cars" through authorized ports on our computer, thus restricting unfettered access. It function within a network is similar to firewalls with fire doors in building construction. In the former case, it is used to prevent network intrusion to the private network. In the latter case, it is intended to contain and delay structural fire from spreading to adjacent structures. In order to prevent damage by viruses and worms, users typically install antivirus software, which runs in the background on the computer, detecting any suspicious software and preventing it from running.

Revenue Model of Google, eBay and Amazon.com

These three online shopping websites are internationally well-known and do earn a lot through the application of several types of business model. What kind o f revenue model they are using in generating their profits? For your information, there are 5 major revenue models in this information technology business environment which are sales, transaction fees, subscription fees, advertising fees, affiliate fees, and some other revenue sources.

Google is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, web-based email, video sharing and so on. Google is heavily adopting advertising fees revenue model and thus most of its revenue is derived from advertising programs. Its principal advertising services include the Google AdWords, Google Adsense, Google Answers, Froogle and so on. Google Adwords is a per click advertising program which allows web advertisers to display advertisements in the ride side of researchers’ search results. Besides, Google AdSense allows web advertisers to enroll text, image, and video advertisement in Google’s search results and other Google related websites. You may view the following demo on how to generate a Google Ad Code at .An advertiser has to pay every time his advertisement has been clicked by an interested result searcher.

Example of Google Adwords which allow the advertiser to display their advertisement when people are looking for information related to what the advertiser has to offer

eBay.com is owned by eBay Inc and is an online auction and shopping website in which people could sell and buy good and service online internationally. It provides the pathway for people to sell and bid for the item that they wish to posses. In another word, it applying the transaction fees revenue model; acts as broker between and seller and buyer and generate its revenue (commission) for each successful transaction. In addition, eBay also generate its revenue through advertising fees model by provide the advertisement mechanism in their website by charging the advertisers fees of listing an item, banner or advertisement. However, the major source of income of eBay is from its online auction services.

The difference between Amazon.com and eBay is where Amazon.com owned it inventories and constitute sales in its website. While eBay do not poses any inventory for selling purpose. Amazon operates retail websites and also provides programs that enable third party the opportunity to sell their products or services on its web sites internationally. The primary source of its revenue is selling of wide range of products and services to its customer which is primarily based on the sales revenue model. Besides, Amazon.com also applying the transaction revenue model as they receive the commissions when the third party manage to sell their product through the program provided by Amazon.com. You may explore further by clicking the money icon below if you are interested to sell your stuffs at Amazon.com

E-Commerce?!

Hey, do you know what E-Commerce is? I guess some of you might say yes and some might say no, but it is just ok if you know any about e-commerce and also even you do not know any about it. Today I want to share with you all something about what e-commerce is, and also the history and evolution of it. It might be not an interesting story, but, please be patient and follow me to step in depth into e-commerce world and learn more about it!

What is E-Commerce?

E-commerce, a new path of business model superior in terms of efficiency, productivity, profitability and competitiveness which available to all sizes of business and also known as Electronic Commerce in full term. It is generally the “in” thing today which conducts real time business transactions in a “borderless world” 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for example, Amazon.com, AirAsia.com etc.

It is electronic trading which commonly involved the process of marketing, buying, selling or exchanging products, services and information through the Internet via the computer between parties to transact business. The parties involved in e-commerce can be individuals, organizations or both by using international networked computers to do electronic transactions which involve the transfer of ownership or rights to use a good or service or to create and transform business relationships.

Apart from that, e-commerce also used to transfer and share information within organizations through Intranets in order to improve decision making process without wasting money, time and effort. The new pattern of e-commerce nowadays is not just concerned on transactions but also on building new relationships, sustaining and improving relationships, both existing and potential to the business and also extensions of networks and webs of activities.

The four common categories of e-commerce are Business-To-Business (B2B), Business-To-Consumer (B2C), and Business-To-Government (B2G) and Business-To-Employees (B2E).

The History and Evolution of…

All commerce was carried out face-to-face or via the mails before e-commerce appears to be common. E-commerce began a time before personal computers were common and has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry. Now, just let me give you a brief picture about the history and evolution of e-commerce.

In the early of 1970s, e-commerce applications were first developed with innovation such as EFT, or electronic funds transfer which funds could be routed electronically from one organization to another. However, the extent of the applications was limited to large corporations, financial institutions, and some other daring businesses.

In 1984, electronic data interchange (EDI), a technology used to transfer routine documents electronically which expanded electronic transfers from financial transactions to other types of transaction processing such as ordering. EDI has enlarged the pool of participating companies from financial institutions to manufacturers, services and variety of businesses. At the same time, EDI was standardized through ASC X12 and this guaranteed that companies would be able to complete transactions with one another reliably. Then, more electronic commerce applications followed, ranging from travel reservation systems such as American Airlines to stock trading. Such systems were called interorganisational system (IOS) applications, and their strategic value to businesses has been widely recognized.

In the early 1990s, Internet has been commercialized and users began to participate in the World Wide Web (WWW) and electronic commerce applications start rapidly expanded. In the year of 1992, CompuServe offers online retail products to its customers and this gives people the first chance to buy things off their computer. Netscape arrived at 1994 and providing Internet users a simple browser to surf the Internet and a safe online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer. Internet users have observed the development of many innovative applications ranging from online direct selling to e-learning since 1995 and two of the biggest names in e-commerce are launched at the year, that are Amazon.com and eBay.com.

In 1998, DSL, or Digital Subscriber Line provides fast and always-on Internet service to subscribers across California, USA. This prompts people to spend more time and money to go online. The emphasis of e-commerce shifted from B2C to B2B in 1999 and from B2B to B2E, collaborative commerce (c-commerce), e-government, e-learning, and mobile commerce (m-commerce) in 2001.

With the more and more competitive global market currently, it is extremely important for businesses to embrace the latest methods and trends to conduct their businesses. With the advancement of technology, especially the Internet, e-commerce has become common and widely spread in business world today and tomorrow in order to generate profits in a more efficient manner. Thus it is not surprised that there will be continuing grow of e-commerce in the future.

Huh, finally… ^^:::

Yup, I has finished my long winded story about e-commerce finally and hope that everyone who reading this gained something new throughout the previous parts. Thank you for spending time with me here, ciao! =D

More about E-Commerce

~SiuLing~

An example of an E-Commerce success and its causes

E-commerce is getting more widely used nowadays. There are many examples of E-Commerce success and Google is one of them. Google was launched in 1998 ago by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The mission of Google is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google is one of the world’s largest search engines that many people choose to search for information needed. It is easy to use and it is free of charge.

Google has become so successful because of some reasons. Google focuses on user satisfaction. It provides services that are easy to use and benefits the users. Google’s AdWords and AdSense are two of the Google Advertising Programs. AdWords is for advertisers to advertise their business on Google. Thousands of advertisers use it to promote their products and services on the web with targeted advertising. AdWords enables an advertiser to reach new customers by having his ads appear when people search Google and its advertising network. It reaches people when they are looking for information about products and services offered online by the advertisers, and the advertisers will only pay when people click on their ads.

AdSense is for web publishers to enhance their websites. Web publishers can earn more revenue with minimal effort and no additional cost from their websites by using Google AdSense which delivers text and image ads that are precisely targeted to their sites and matches ads to their sites’ content. Web publishers earn money whenever visitors click on them. With the acquisition of YouTube by Google, selected video clips will be shown across the AdSense network, along with advertising that helps to earn revenue.

Google Toolbar adds a search box to the browser. It helps to search faster and smarter with instant suggestions when you type anything you want to search in the search box. You can add buttons for your favourite sites to the Toolbar, bookmark pages that frequently visit, and share web pages with friends through email, blog or SMS. Google Toolbar also helps to block pop-ups, translate pages into English instantly, and correct spelling mistakes in your webmail.

Google also provides mail service which is known as Gmail. It is free service from Google. Google Apps help business to communicate better with Google Mail and more. Google Apps gives everyone in a company a custom email address, tools for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, a shared calendaring system and access to a flexible intranet system.

Other than these, Google provides many other services for the users such as Book Search, University Search, News Search, Image Search, and others. We can also search for journal articles using Google for the purpose of education.

Besides, users love the simplicity of Google and the results provided. The design of Google’s homepage is very simple to enable the pages to be loaded faster. Users can get the information they need easier and faster, and it saves time.

Google’s success also depends on its focus on a product designed for real users and a strong vision about information access. Moreover, Google took hiring of employees seriously. They hire the right people to work for them. Google also has flat organizational structure which contributes to its success. These features of Google are the reasons why it succeeds in E-Commerce and preferably be used widely over the world.

How E-commerce reduce cycle time, facilitate customer support and improve employee's empowerment?

Due to the advancement of technology in today’s 21 century, the traditional form of trading has been replaced by the growth of internet.

Most of the companies are using internet to carry out their business activities which is E-commerce. With the use of E-commerce, the manufacturers may be able to reduce time cycle. How to reduce time cycle? Basically the manufacturers sell their product directly to the buyer through the use of the internet, products are display in the webpage with the description and the price of the products, the buyer can easily click the website and see the products they desire to buy, they do not need a middleman to help them to distribute their products to the retailer and thus, the manufacturers can buy or sell their products directly, and avoiding the cost of middleman. Besides, the manufacturers can also reduce the cost of distribution costs for information.

Moreover, E-commerce can also help to facilitate customer support. Most company provides a 24 hour online customer service such as FAQ section to enable the customer to obtain any information about the company’s product and about the company’s information; the company will reply their enquiry through the internet. Besides, some company may also provide their telephone number to enable the customer to enquire for more details about the information. Through this online customer service, the customer does not need to go to the company and get the information they want, they just need to click on the web page and post the question to the company’s website and the company will reply their question. This service not only save the customer’s time but it also can help the company to retain its customer.

Other than that, E-commerce can also help to improve employees’ empowerment. Employee empowerment basically means that the non-managerial staff can make decision without the consulting of a boss. The customer can directly place an order through the internet, thus it does not need approval from higher manager. This enables the employee to improve their empowerment as they are the one who manage the ordering. Thus, this will increase the productivity of the employee because the employees involve in decision making.