• A discussion on E-learning offered in Malaysian universities: Pros and Cons from the students perspective

With the development of technology, E- learning (Electronic learning) is a technology where support the learning process. Lately, E-learning has used in some Malaysian Universities that the students attend the course or programs by studying online and rarely attending to the campus.

Pro of E-learning
-Flexible: E-learning enables the students to learn or complete the chapter anytime as long as they are convenient at that time and not just need to fix to the particular time to attend the course in the campus. Students can attend at off-hours or from home or anyplace because this is international sharing.
-Asynchronous interaction: Instead of face-to-face interaction, e-learning does not require the students to respond immediately, student can self-pacing depends on their understanding. For those who are quick learners they can learn through the content faster while for slow learners they can learn on their own speed and this will increase their satisfaction and reduce the stress.
-Confidence: Students can refresh back to the point that not very power on it or there will be quick reference material available to the students in order to reduce their burden of responsibility of mastery on the particular course.

Cons of e-learning
- The most serious cons of e-learning is that for those student who is low motivation or has bad study habit may fall behind. E-learning requires times to complete especially those assignment or they will postpone their learning every time. For e-learning, student self-discipline is important, they have to be highly motivated and responsible because all the work they do is on their own.
- This will decrease the communication skill of students with the other students or lectures. Besides that, there will also less social and cultural interaction. The students will become impersonality and eliminate peer-to-peer learning that are consider as quite important in student life.
- Students may need to have particular skills on the learning programs. E-learning may require the students to access to the internet so slow internet connection or older computers may make accessing course materials difficult. Thus, without the skills, good fittings, software it is quite difficult for the students to succeed in e-learning and the student may give up.

There are still many benefits that e-learning bring to the students but it also need to care of all perspectives. From the student perspectives, they can save the travel cost and even for those outstation students they can study from their home and save their accommodation expenses. Besides that, some may also be able to find some part time job when they are taking the course. For me, I will choose the traditional method because college life or student life may important and memorable experienced for all the students.

http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art1_3.htm

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

Do you know what is E-Government?

How do you check or pay your summons?

Do you know what is e-filing Income Tax Form?

According to Wikipedia, e-Government (electronic government) 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.

The purpose of e-Government in Malaysia is to lead the country into the Information Age. It has improved both the government operation system and the government services to the people of Malaysia. Furthermore, it seeks to improve the convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions with citizens and businesses. Simultaneously, it will improve information flows and processes within government to improve the speed and quality of policy development, coordination and enforcement.

e-Government's vision is for government, businesses and citizenry working together for the benefit of Malaysia and all of its citizens. Its goal is to improve the effectiveness and efficiencies of the government in delivering services to the people of Malaysia, enabling the government to become more responsive to the needs of its citizens.

e-Government's Implementations:

1. Project Monitoring System (SPP II)

• SPP II is designed to provide a mechanism for monitoring and implementation of government projects, provides a platform for exchanging ideas, and demonstrating best practices models in information management and communication services.

2. Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)

• HRMIS provides single interface for government employees to perform human resource functions effectively and efficiently. Besides that, it will also help to standardize all human resource processes. Its objective is not just for record keeping, but also provides transactional functions such as leave application, loan processing, competency management, recruitment and selection
  

3. Generic Office Environment (GOE)

• GOE's goal is to introduce a fully integrated, distributed and scalable office environment that leverages use of multimedia Information Technology. This allows collaboration across all workers, enables efficient communication, and ensures right information reaching the right people in a timely manner.

4. Electronic Procurement (EP)

• EP's objective is to re-engineer, automate, and transform current procurement system. The project would cover central contract, tender and direct purchase. EP helps to increase transparency, saves time and money, while encourage suppliers to go electronic and join the K-economy.

5. Electronic Services (E-Services)

• E-Services allowed citizens of Malaysia to engage in transactions with government and utilities payments, such as telephone and electricity bills and police summons.
  

6. Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)

• ELX's goal objective is to improve the mobilization of human resource and optimize workforce utilization through systematic matching of job seekers of job vacancies.

7. Internal Revenue Department (IRD)

• IRD allowed companies use My Key digital signature to digitally sign their C form and submit the document electronically to Internal Revenue Board. Individuals were expected be able to file their taxes online to IRD using My Key.
  

Citizen's Adoption Strategies:

E-Services is rapidly gaining attention and importance. Citizens expect the governmental services to be high degree of quality, quantity, and availability in a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week, and year-round fashion. Every country's governments are developing information systems and electronic services that have the capacity to meet these emerging service needs and demands.

The success in delivering electronic services are depends on the capability and self-confidence of citizens in performing e-transactions, as well as their trust and confidence in the protection of their personal data within an open and accountable government.

The significant predictors of citizens’ intention to use e-Services are the ease of use, compatibility, and trustworthiness. It perceived reactive advantage, perceived image, perceived compatibility, perceived usefulness, and relative advantage are significant elements of e-Government adoption.

Referencing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Government
http://www.mait.com/admin/enews_images/MAIT%20Country%20Intelligence%20eNews96_37.pdf
http://ecomworld.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/e-government-in-malaysia-2/

Coporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Corporate blog is become very familiar to be a new marketing communication tool for many companies. As a generalization, it is a blog which created by the company in order to achieve the organization goals. The corporate blog has divided into three categories namely, internal blogs, external blogs, and CEO blogs.

Basically, the internal blogs is participated by employees of the organization by sharing the information and freely discuss the important issues which may help the organization to develop the collective intelligence and enhanced the communication between the various levels of the organization.

The external blogs is facilitated the company employees, teams and spokespersons to share their views and opinion. Besides, it can be a communication tool for company to be public relations, promote a new product and so on. The external blogs also provide information for consumers and some web blog is allowed make comments. The company can developed and improved their marketing plans, customer services and quality of the products based on the consumers’ feedback.

Conference or printed memos can be eliminated by creation of the corporate blogs and it can more accessible. Moreover, it enhanced the communication among each others in different levels of management which will help the company in achieving the goals. Besides, it also helps the company to get better understanding of the expectation of consumer towards the products and services.

In our opinion, corporate blogging is an effective tool to promoting and marketing for a company. However, since the corporate blogging is very familiar but there are some companies are still not blog yet. They might not know the benefits of blogging and they have different kind of way to do promoting and marketing. Thus, education and training program can be provided to enhance the uses of blogging.

Review a local, transactional e-commerce site : Lelong.com.my

Do you have experience of online shopping or participating in e-auction?

Do you visit e-Bay frequently?

I do. I love online shopping very much, as i can have more variety of shopping and sometimes i can even buy worthy goods at a lower price. So, please don't think that I am only a spendthrift girl, but actually I am also a wise consumer.

Other than the world famous known auction site, e-Bay. Let me introduce you a local e-auction site, http://www.lelong.com.my/. It is an auction platform that provides people a platform to buy and sell things online, such as electronic products, books, home appliances and so on- even the houses or cars.


This e-commerce site has established in Malaysia several years ago.

• Just like e-bay, lelong.com provide search engine in order to help the users easily find what they are interesting in.
  
• Besides, this e-commerce site also allows you to open your own “store”.
• It is also available in three different language versions- English, Chinese and Malay. It makes lelong.com stands out among the competitors in Malaysian market.
• Auctioneer Profile and Ratting, this function allows you to check the auctioneer trade history and record, it help us to have more confident and reassurance trade with him/her. Normally we will find one trusted auctioneer better have high success trade percentage, therefore can reduce the opportunity of fraud auction.
• If you bid successful, you must make payment by follow the auctioneer instructions. For example, bank in the money to him first. If you never try bid auction online you should try, you will find that is very excited, and you can learn a lot from the whole process.
  
• Before you bid or sell your item you must register an account with your real identity first.
1. You would have to verify your hand phone number & Email.
2. You would have to verify your I/C , home line phone and make a payment of RM10.00 to avoid you making e-auction fraud.

Referencing:
http://www.quarkbase.com/show/lelong.com.my
http://www.lelong.com.my/

The application of pre-paid cash card for consumers

The pre-paid cash card’s design is same as debit card and users can make cashless payment but only can spend the balance that has been topped-up. There are many countries implemented the pre-paid cash card, such as, Touch N GO in Malaysia, Octopus in Hong Kong and Ez Link in Singapore. Users are able to use the card anywhere as it is accepted. It is more safety instead of carrying too much cash.

Touch N Go in Malaysia is mainly used in highway tolls, public transportations and some selected car parking space. It uses contactless smart card technology and users can continuously use the card as long as it pre-loaded with electronic cash. Users can save time and need for being waiting in queue and prepare small change.

Octopus is widely used in Hong Kong and it was launched in year 1997. The card is an electronic fare card that used to transfer electronic payment in online or offline system in Hong Kong. The card is used for payment at convenience stores, supermarkets, restaurants, car park, public transportation and so on. Users still can travel n purchase stuff by the card instead of carrying cash on the hand.

The application of the pre-paid cash card is good to implement as it does not provide credit facility and prevent users run into debts. Touch N Go is in process of advancement as it expanding their application and services towards the retail purchase, such as, fast food store, Caltex convenience stores, Cinema and so on. Therefore, in our opinion, the application of Touch N Go will be more advance and provide more functions in order to simplify our daily life in future.

1. Mobile payment systems in Malaysia: Its potentials and consumers’ adoption strategies.

Mobile payment is a payment method which is still developing with the growth of WiFi and 3G cellular phone systems. Instead of paying with cash, check or credit card, a customer can use the mobile phone, Smart phone or Personal Digital Assistance to pay for several services. There were quite a number of mobile payments that available in Malaysia such as moneyMe, Mobile money and etc.

Mobile payment has brings some advantages to the consumers and has the potential to growth in Malaysia. Mobile payment has the ability to pay the services without having to carry cash or line up in a long queue or present in the store.

There are many company has also coming up with the same concept and even with more functional such as Near Field Communication(NFC) technology was introduce by Visa, Maybank, Maxis, Touch n’ Go. This contactless technology has allows the users to pay for their goods and services by waving their phone over an electronic reader. Visa has already adopted this technology in its payWave contactless credit or debit cards.

Other than the potentiality of Mobile Payment, the consumers will also comfortable with the advantage of mobile payment. Mobile payment is fast and easy because it is ubiquitous, the consumers can pay for the services anytime or anywhere. Besides that, the mobile payment paired with reliability and safety as the payer and payee can authenticate and record the transaction.For moneyMe, the records are controlled with a personal PIN and the account is not stored on the mobile phone, so if the customers lose the phone, the moneyMe will freeze the account until further notice.

Mobile payment is the convenient technology that makes life easy. Consumers can pay for the goods and services anytime, anywhere or to anyone. By the way, this will reduce the risk of theft also.

For more information about mobile payment, can visit the following links :
http://www.mobile-money.com/index.html
http://www.com2u.com.my/transaction.html

Electronic Currency

Electronic currency, also known as electronic money, electronic cash, digital currency, digital cash as well as digital money. The use of the electronic money is done through the computer networks, the internet and also the digital stored value system. This money is only exchange electronically. It assisted in the online-based purchases and sales transaction conveniently.

Electronic benefit transfer (EBT)
--one of the examples of the use of electronic currency.
--It is the business-to-business E-commerce
--use to made payment electronically.

E-Check
--is also one of the electronic currencies.
--function as the paper check.
--an electronic version of a paper check with some additional function as compare with the traditional paper check.
--an useful tool for online shopping payment.

Advantages

Fast

It serves as a universal media of exchange which allowed users to make quick online payment ubiquity at anywhere anytime provided that there is an internet connection. With the speed of transferability, it enables the users to send and receive money instantly from anyone all around the globe.

Confidentiality

Privacy Current electronic currency systems vary in their effects on privacy from total anonymity, in which personally identifiable records are not created (blinded coins), to audited systems that collect and store every aspect of each transaction. One of the most attractive features of electronic currency is that, unlike real cash, it is anonymous. That is, when a electronic currency amount is sent from a customer to a merchant, there is no way to obtain information about the customer.

Security

The security of electronic currency is provided by the use of encryption. Some experts are weary about the security of online transactions.
Various types of safeguard are there to identify the fraud, charge back prevention, funds verification, PIN verification and others security system.
As an example, the use of RSA cryptography makes it almost impossible to break the code of a digital signature. Additionally, the enacted digital signature statutes require a certification authority to use a trustworthy system.
Therefore, even though there is speculation about the security of the Internet, electronic currency consumers are probably more secure in their transactions than the more traditional ways of doing business.

Disadvantages

Fraud

--is the MAJOR disadvantage of electronic currency.

It is because, if a consumer somehow misplaces his private key and a perpetrator uses it to withdraw funds, the bank would never know and the consumer would be liable.
Additionally, if the security code is broken and the message is intercepted, the hacker will be able to perpetrate fraud on the recipient of the message.

Peer-to-peer Double Spending

--is a potential drawback, if the consumer chooses a peer-to-peer transaction.
Whereas, in all other transactions in the electronic currency system, the bank will be able to check the serial number of each coin in a transaction against its database of spent coins, and if the coin has been spent, the transaction will be denied.

Illegal Activities

--Problem arises when it come to the collection of taxation.
--Additionally, electronic currency also creates the ease of possibility of money laundering.

Therefore, to encourage the implementation of E-currency,
more rules and regulation must be created to solve the disadvantages and problems of using the it, so that E-commerce could achieve its full potential in the future.

References:

http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v6n3/ishman63_text.html

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

www.amggateway.com/how_it_works-eCheck.html

Credit Card debts: Cause and Prevention

Do you like to use 'Future' money?

How well do you plan your budget?

Do you know many people declared bankrupt due to credit card debts?

Today's people like to purchase and pay by credit cards, as they are using the future money. Many people swipe without thinking, measuring the risk of being blacklisted and declared bankrupt for fail to pay their credit card debts. Many of them never realized the consequences from financial and non financial perspectives when they get a credit card. There are many factors for people incurred credit card debts, lets discuss the factors.

Causes of Credit Card Debts:

Unemployment
One of the major causes is unemployment - Many households use credit card to purchase groceries, utilities and other expenses purposes to maintain their lifestyle. When the credit card holder of the households has loss their job and remain unemployed during short periods, may cause the rise in credit card debts and cannot pay due to reduction in income. This happened especially during the economy crisis and companies start to lay off their employee.

Poor Money Management
This is one of the best reasons for today's households have accumulated a lot of credit card debs. It happened because people didn't planed well for their monthly spending and do not pay their bills in time. Many people never realized some of their spending are useless and unnecessary, this lead to a rise in debts by using credit cards.

Less or no savings
As we don't know what will happen tomorrow, we should have at least saving of 4-6 months living expenses. Nowadays, people tend to spend more than what they earned; so it is very hard for them to have savings. So if they loss their job or any unfortunate tragedy happens, they are unable to pay their credit card debts.

Solutions:

Budgeting
A prevention of incurred huge debt is budgeting, people should always make a clear budget and stick on it, such as monthly bills, food, clothes, entertainment and miscellaneous expenses. Make a budget can helps to prevent from overspending and fall under deeper debt load.

Deal with Creditors
Besides budgeting, we should communicate with creditors instantly when having trouble to pay off our debts to see whether they could give a revised payment arrangement. Running away from debts is not a responsible action and not a good solution. It the money collection from creditors is not fair, we may refer to Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to get solutions.

Self control and discipline
The best way to avoid huge debts is to have a direct set up, which we can settle the spending in full amount for each month and use in emergencies. We should spend on what we need rather than what we want, and do not overspend. The main prevention is to spend less in order to stay with well financial situation.



Referencing:
http://www.mmail.com.my/content/credit-card-debt-and-you-many-unaware-effects-bankruptcy
http://ecommercesite.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/credit-card-debts-causes-and-prevention/
http://www.3debtconsolidation.com/top10-causes.html

A review on a post on Internet Security from My E-commerce blog

A password is a secret word that used by most users to prove their identity or access to the resource. In the modern, many area also required users to key in their users name and password to log into a process so that it can protect the computer processing system. There was no requirement that password must be actual words, indeed password which are not actual words are more difficult to guess by a hacker. According to the blog, there are some research done by the Information week stated that based on their analysis of 28000 passwords, 16% users likes to use their name include their spouse or children name while 14% likes to use some password which are easy and nice such as 1234 or 12345678. Lastly, there are small amount of users who will used the word "password" as their password.

Besides that, there was also some other password which will used by the users such as the English keyboard letters below the numeric keys. This password is easy to remember by the users and not so easy guess by others. Those popular TV show stars such as Pokemon, matrix, iron man also will be chosen as the users passwords. I love you or I hate you also quite popular to be used by users for their password.

Based on some computers expects opinion, an online users should not use the same password for everything because once the password has been figures it out, the hacker will do some malicious damages especially for online banking. So that, it is recommend to use a combination of letters and numbers that would be virtually impossible to guess such as a23ui9r but remember not to record it down as a document on the PC.

In conclusion, users need to be cautious when create their password to prevent some malicious damages. Some website which require user name and password from the user to enable log in will restricted the users to choose a password which is longer than 8 character. To be more safer, users can create a password with a capital letter or a symbol or a number.

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

http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/Internet%20Security

How to safeguard our personal & financial data?

Do you know how to protect your data?

Is it save enough?

Do you need to protect your data like this??

For me, I only know the basic way to protect my data. Before i found out these researches, i wont realize that my way to protect data is outdated, because there is a lot of software that can easily hack into my data or computer.
Hacker is the “most professional people” that steal data without your knowledge. Thus,it is very dangerous for you and me, because we don’t know have strong knowledge in protecting our data. In order to prevent it, we need to start to protect our data now.

There are few ways to safeguard our data:

1) Set up password
--this is not the best way , as others can still steal your data if your password can be guessed.
--Thus, we should avoid using password such as birthday, name and identity card number, this type of password is can be easily guessed by other people.
--Besides that, we should not use repeating word in a password e.g. Betty.
--The length of the password is also very important, at least 7 words long.
--Nowadays, when setting up the password there will be an identification bar of the strengtheners of your password. Therefore, remember to set the password that is strong enough to avoid stealing of data.

2) Firewall

--a part of a computer system or network that is designed to block unauthorized access.
--are usually used to prevent unauthorized users from accessing private networks, especially intranets. --All messages entering or leaving the intranet pass through the firewall, which examines each message and blocks those that are unauthorized.
--It is suitable for both individual or organization use.
--There is a lot of firewall software that are available in the internet; you can download it for free.


3) Antivirus Software
--Computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission of the owner.
--Virus can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by another computer.
--Thus, in order to avoid virus hacking our computer, we need to install antivirus software. --The software must be very strong enough to “kill” the virus. Therefore, we need to update antivirus software everyday, so there will be strong protection for our data.





4) Log in, log out
--When you log in to some website, the website may keep your username and password. --This may be dangerous when you are using public device to log on to that website. Others may steal your data without your knowledge.
--So, after you log in to one website, you need to make sure that you have clear the data. This will ensure that your data will not be hack by others or other people misuse your accounts.
--MOST IMPORTANT: when you sign in to one account, you need to ensure that you have sign out from that account, because some people will directly close the window and they think that the account will be automatically sign out. (Some website will automatically sign out your account but not all.) You need to make sure that you have signed out to the account and make a double check by log in another time to that website.
-- Especially those financial website, eg www.maybank2u.com

Phishing

Phishing is an act to imitate legitimate in internet environment to lure people to share passwords or credit card numbers. Criminals usually targeted on online services for day-to-day activities which including banking, shopping and more. Normally, the purpose of phishing is to commit financial fraud.

Examples of phishing:

1. Maybank phishing
Phishing email is sent to lure the user to venture over the phishing website. The URL and page of the website look exactly right. The scammer might copy the Web page code from a major site and use that code to set up a fake Web page which will make the user look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. When the user clicked into the website, it is prompted to enter user online detail which is Maybank account username and password.

2. eBay phishing
User received an email from eBay member which claimed that there is a problem with payment to the Paypal account. When the user click to the respond button and directed to an eBay phishing website asking for the login information.

Prevention methods:

1. Education and awareness is important in prevention in order to train the user to recognize phishing attempts and deal with it.

2. Web browser toolbars is one of the methods to prevent phishing. For example, before submitting financial information through a website, look for the “lock” icon on the browser’s status bar to check whether the information is secured during transmission.

http://www.uscert.gov/reading_room/phishing_trends0511.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

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

How you lock your computer?
Like this? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>

Do you aware of computer viruses?

What kind of threats are there?

Nowadays, organizations are always facing cyber attacks from inside and outside of the organization, it is a huge number of cyber attacks happening day to day. According to Secure Works, the number of attempted hacks rose from 11,146 per health care client per day in the first half of 2007 to almost 20,630 per day in the second half of 2007 in January 2008. Besides organization, even individual computer users are facing the Internet threats and attacks. There are 2 categories of threats and attacks, nontechnical attack and technical attack.

Nontechnical attack:

It is where the attackers do some action that compromise the security of a network or use their intelligent and chicanery to trick people to get their personal information such as password, credit card numbers, and other sensitive information. One of the type of nontechnical is social engineering - which is the hacker uses the social pressures to trick computer users, such as cheating people for gain the financial transaction. Other than that, Phishing also is a type of the nontechnical attack. For further Phishing information, please click here.

Technical attack:

Denial-of-service (DoS) attack

DoS or distributed Dos attack is where the attacker uses particular software to send a flood of data packets to the victim (computer) in the purpose to make its resources unavailable to its intended user. There are various types DoS attack, the 5 basic types of DoS attack are consumption of computational resources, Disruption of configuration information, Disruption of state information, Disruption of physical network components, and obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate

adequately.

Spyware

It is also called adware, which is a software that is hiding in your computer for the purposes of gather your personal information and Internet use habits. After that, software then relays it to advertisers, marketing groups and others who use the information to target you with pop-up ads. It is similar to computer virus, it can cause the computer become slow down or hang up. Further more, it will also cause conflicts between different software program, add new toolbars in the Web browser, change the Web browser's homepage, slow down network speed, and etc. The examples of Spyware are CoolWebSearch, Internet Optimizer, Zango, HuntBar, Zlob Trojan and so on. For more detailed information, please click here.

Virus

Virus is a software code that replicates itself and infects another file, program, partition sector, boot sector, or a document with executable instructions (such as macros) by attaching itself or inserting itself into that medium. It needs its host program to be run in order to activate it, so it won't cause damage when the computer turned off. Majority viruses are just replicate and do little more, but there are some viruses that can cause a significant amount of damage. There are many type of viruses, such as Resident Viruses, Direct Action Viruses, Overwrite Viruses, Boot Virus, Macro Virus, Directory Virus, and etc.

Worm

A computer worm is a computer program that runs independently. It will send copies of itself to other computers through the network and without any user intervention. Unlike a virus, it does not need to attach itself to an existing program. Worms almost always cause at least some harm to the network, if only by consuming bandwidth, whereas viruses almost always corrupt or devour files on a targeted computer. It can damage the computer data even the computer is not running once the computer is infected. As compare with viruses, worm cause the damage more slowly.

Trojan Horse

It is a term used to describe malware - which is a program that appears to have a useful function but, in fact, it contains a hidden function that gain unauthorized access to the user's computer system. The name of 'Trojan Horse' is came from the story in Greek mythology. Trojan horses are not self-replicating which distinguishes them from viruses and worms. Additionally, they require interaction with a hacker to fulfill their purpose.

As we always say 'prevention is better than cure', instead of worry and cure the computer system after infected viruses, better prevent it by install anti-virus in the computer system and be more careful when access to the Internet and the time when received unauthorized email. From my experience, better not click on the pop-up from the Web site and ignore those email sent from unauthorized people. For getting a free anti-virus, visit http://free.avg.com/.

Referencing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://doit.missouri.edu/security/make-it-safe/spyware-phishing.html
http://www.yourdictionary.com/hacker/types-of-threats
http://ezinearticles.com/?Examples-Of-Spyware-And-What-They-Are&id=1054106
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/different-types-of-computer-viruses.html

The success of eBay and its causes~~

" i STARTED eBay as an experiment, as a side hobby
basically, while i had my day job."
Founder and Chairman of eBAy- Pierre Omidyar~~


ebay is the world largest online auction sites with a global customer base of 233 million in which people and businesses trade the million item worldwide, national or local basis. eBay is found by Pierre Omidyar in 1995.Pierre Omidyar knew that people need a central location to buy and sells all kinds of item and to meet others with similar interest. eBay has created for the sale of good and services in the world wide web by the intensity community of an individual or small businesses. In year 1998, Pierre and his cofounder Jeff Skoll has brought Meg Whitman to sustain the business. Meg had created an experienced management team and build a strong vision for eBay that eBay is a company that’s running a business that connecting people to trade and not selling items to them.

“create an efficient market where individuals could benefit from participating in an efficient market, kind of level the playing field”- Pierre Omidyar


Internet businesses to be successful, the main things that need to consider that internet business would require an easy URL to remember. The users will more likely to visit a more memorable site such as eBay. eBay also provide shopping cart to convenient their customers. eBay is convenient online trading website for the buyers and sellers. The sellers are permitted to list their items for sales on the website and advertise it with a picture and descriptions to a world wide audience. Moreover the buyers can ask or order on the specific items which they are interested in. All the eBay users can browse through the listed items in a fully automated way. These items are grouped according with each type of auctions which has its own category.

eBay has the ability to remodel those primarily local market into global ones with a low cost. Human always has the need or interest on buying or selling the used, surplus or collectible items. Previously, they have to buy through some garage sales or advertisement in the newspaper.

eBay has growth by bringing in a large numbers of buyers and sellers. The more buyers there are, the more sellers were liked to participate. The more sellers they are, the more items to buy, so its will attract more buyers.

eBay give many people a chance to start their small business with small amount of capital and without paying the rent for the property, utility bills and so on. During the recession time, many people were interested to sell things in eBay. Some were interested in purchasing used item. Besides that, company also interest in buying some industrial items online at steep discount to formal channels.


eBay earn the money through the listing fees and collecting a percentage
of the selling price of items sold through the site. EBay also owns
PayPal, which allow the user to make their payment online and
makes money from the transaction fees.

eBay has growth potentially by successfully introduce the new markets such as car sales which will not expect to be run on this business model. Even though only a small percentage of world’s population was the users of ebay. Lastly ebay has really listen to the customers and its ability to respond quickly when competitive threats come along. eBay has managed to receive the feedback from the customers and bring innovations to eBay. That’s why eBay has successfully accumulated a large number of sellers and buyers in a single marketplace.

For my own opinion, i feel that ebay is really useful for the sellers and buyers also, so that it get many support from the public. It really benefit the users and help the users to be success. Pierre Omidyar and his partner are really intelligent person who create this way to help people around to reach their dream. Even for me who is just a under-graduate student also can made my own business through ebay.

“ Having millions of buyers and sellers who can make adjustments far faster than any company could is a huge advantage” – Meg Whitman


http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&id=539
http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~magnus/ief248a/eBay/history.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/18371/why_is_ebay_so_successful.html
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=345309

The failure of Kozmo.com

Kozmo.com was founded in March 1998 by two young Wall Street professionals, Joseph Park and Yong Kang in New York City. It was an online company which provides home delivery service for free within an hour. It is designed to be the convenience store of the Net. Kozmo.com running from magazine to CD’s to movies to food which customers had wide-variety choice to consume at Kozmo.com site. The main client of Kozmo.com is college students and young professionals because it is bringing convenience to the people.
Kozmo.com is shutting down in April 2001 after the collapse of the dot-com bubble by laying off its staff of 1,100 employees. Kozmo.com had filed an IPO before layoffs. Based on the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company had revenue of $ 3.5 million with a net loss of $26.3 million in 1999.

Causes for failure :
1. The cost of delivery is expensive when a small good which ordered by customer is delivered point-to-point within one hour.
2. Kozmo.com had expanding their business to 11 cities. Some business analysts said that Kozmo.com’s business model only can run efficiency in the packed and hustler city. They also commented that the services can work in only a few other cities around the world, such as London and Paris.
3. Kozmo.com is stopped catering to their main client when they are target to upscale clients who expected to order expensive products.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-255710.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com

The History & evolution of E-Commerce

Do you remember buying airline tickets before the Internet?

Can you imagine buying a new computer or car without doing hours of Web research?

How about Chinese New Year shopping? You would actually have to step into the shopping mall.

Now, this may not be a MUST anymore.

E-Commerce (which means electronic commerce), is usually defined as the conduct of business online, via electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. Nowadays, millions of people are involved in e-commerce on the Internet, for example, they visit world wide web sites to buy books, order foods, or check their bank accounts. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage.

To know more about electronic commerce, we would have to drawn back to 30 years ago. At first, electronic commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, which uses technology such as Electronic Data Interchange(EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer(EFT). These technologies were both introduced in the late 1970s, which allowed businesses to send commercial documents, such as the company's purchase order or invoices electronically.

In 1980, the growth and acceptance of credit cards, ATM and telephone banking were also forms of electronic commerce. Meanwhile, another form of e-commerce was the airline reservation system.

While, online shopping was invented in the UK in 1979 by Micheal Aldrich and it was used extensively particularly by those auto-mobile manufacturers during the 1980s, such as Ford, Peugeot-Talbot, General Motors and Nissan.

From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include ERP systems, data mining and data warehousing.

In 1994, Pizza Hut start offers pizza ordering on its Web page. While, some companies attempts to offer flower delivery and magazine subscriptions online.

During 1995, Jeff Bezos launches Amazon.com and the first commercial-free 24 hour, internet-only radio stations, Radio HK and NetRadio had start broadcasting. Besides that, Dell and Cisco begin to aggressively use Internet for their daily commercial transactions. Moreover, eBay is founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar, which now becomes a famous online Auction Web.

And by the end of 2000, a lot of European and American business companies offered their services through the World Wide Web. Since then people start to associate a word "e-commerce" with the ability of purchasing various goods through the Internet using secure protocols and electronic payment services.

Google is changing everything

Do you use Google search engines?

Do you know what is Google spreadsheet?

Do you know what is enterprise search?


~} Is a company associated with E-Commerce.

~} Is running about 500,000 servers.

~} Has an outstanding search engine.

~} Has many special features that make our life easier.

Google is a company associated with E-Commerce that has much impacted to our work and life. As a student, I always using to Google search engine to search for the information required for my assignment. Google is a company that primarily provides web based search and advertising services. Besides search engine and advertising tools, Google has do many other things. Let's explore some Google's activities.

A Glimpse at Google's Activities

Google has offer the Google Docs - which is a free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and form application offered by Google. It combines the features of two services, Writely and Spreadsheets. Google Docs allows us to create and edit documents amongst users and non-users in real time. Google spreadsheet can import and export data from Comma Separated Value (.csv), Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx) files and OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods) that up to 1MB. The data of open documents are automatically saved and a revision history is automatically kept.

Google is studying the demand for Google Spreadsheet to work with Google Base - which is an online database service that allows Google users to post various types of information through Internet. From the view of the analysts, Google Base is classified as e-advertising, which is an e-commerce activity by helping user to display the relevant information on Google's main search index, such as Google Shopping search and Google Local search.

Honestly, I'm a road blind. So before I'm going to a new area I will search for the location I wanted to go from the Google Local search. Its helping me a lot especially when I want to go for the shopping mall that is hard to find. Other than that, Google shopping search also helps me a lot to compare the product price. It is very useful for the people like me who don't like to go shopping.

In 2006 Google expanded its business by offering Google Office - which is a freeware. Besides, Google offer a set of Web programs such as e-mail, communication, and scheduling. Other than that, Google also offer Google Desktop, Google Earth, Google Maps, Picasa, Google Mini, Google Calendar, and etc.

Google Desktop is function like the windows sidebar for Windows Vista, before this I'm using Windows XP so it is very useful for me to display the features of Google Desktop on my desktop. Picasa is a photo viewer and editor, which is a freeware that allowed us to customize our pictures. I'm using Picasa 3, I like to use it to capture some screenshot for the games I play. With running Picasa 3, I just need to press the print screen button on my keyboard to capture the screen shot for my games, then I will upload it to Picase Web Album.



For more Google's products, visit:-
http://pack.google.com/intl/en/pack_installer.html

Enterprise Search

Google enterprise search identifies and enable specific content across the enterprise to be indexed, searched, and displayed to authorized users. New Google Search Appliance (GSA) allowed visitors or intranet users to get the information they needed with fast, familiar Google search. Whether you index hundreds of pages sources or many millions of pages, Google delivers relevant results that increase the usability and value of your business information.

One of the organization that is using Google Search Appliance is Kaiser Permanante - which is the America's largest nonprofit health maintenance organization (HMOs).
Google Search Appliance helps Kaiser's clinicians easier to search for the information from the site any time any where inside the organization. Most of the time doctors and nurses use the search engine to help them check the side effects of the new medications, reach diagnoses and specify treatments, consultant clinical research studies, and etc. Besides that, Google's spell-checking capability is especially useful in the medical profession, due to the pharmaceutical product names are difficult and doctor's handwriting can be problematic.

As my personal's opinion, Google is really helping me a lot with its search engine and its special features. It is really changing mylife to be easier. Google provides a lot of freeware that is needed to be purchased in previous time. Especially for student, we hardly to get income from part time job or no income at all, so Google helps us to save a lot. Thanks Google!


Referencing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs
http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/gsa.html