Review a local e-commerce site (week 6)

One of the famous local E-Commerce sites in Malaysia is the Public Bank.

Public Bank was established in August 1966 by its Founder and Chairman, Tan Sri Dato’ Sri Dr. Teh Hong Piow. Known for its superior service delivery, super PB Brand, strong corporate governance and a corporate culture committed to excellence, Public Bank is a top-tier bank in Malaysia. The Public Bank Group employs more than 14,000 people, with over 90% in Malaysia, with the balance spread out in Hong Kong and China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Sri Lanka. The Public Bank Group has demonstrated a strong capability of delivering exceptionally high rates of organic growth in its core businesses.

The main Core Business The Public Bank Group focuses on a wide range of banking and financial services which include commercial banking, retail wealth management, Islamic banking, investment banking, stock broking and card businesses. Complemented by corporate banking services, Public Bank is a market leader in consumer banking and retail commercial lending to SMEs in Malaysia.

As a UTAR student, it is convenience for them to access pbebanking. These sites allowed student to pay their school fees online. Students just have to subscribe an account and the transaction will be done without have to queue in the bank. Save time and cost. Recently, UTAR and Public Bank have comes up a new Debit card system with 0% interest charge card holder for students. This may allowed students to use the credit card and don’t need to bring out bundle of cash money

For more information, please refers to the website:-

http://www.pbebank.com/

Fraud Prevention In E-Auction (week 6)

An E-Auction is an electronic "reverse" auction where suppliers use internet-based software to bid against each other online and in real time against a published specification. E-Auctions can be based on price alone or can use transformational bidding to account for other criteria such as quality and delivery. E-Auctions are most often used in the final stages of the procurement where all "non-price" factors (e.g. quality evaluation and terms and conditions) have already been agreed.

Online frauds are by far the hardest to track and scammers rarely get caught. When a buyer files a dispute to Paypal, I usually find that Paypal works in favor of the buyer. There is little a seller can do sometimes.

Do you know that over 176,000 complaints were lodged in 2006 relating to Internet fraud; an increase of 16,000 over 2005? The two most common age groups reporting online fraud were 30 - 39 and 40 - 49 at 24% each. Statistics for 2007 are not out yet though.

To prevent consumer from fraud during the E-Auctions. Consumers must beware of:-

Fraud committed by sellers:
1. Shipping faulty items or parts and never acknowledge buyer about it.
2. Shill bidding on own accounts.
3. Dispatching items which are not as described.
4. Selling stolen goods.
5. Selling counterfeits or replicas.6. Receiving payments but not shipping items.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies (week 6)

A corporate blog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads.

In the corporation are divided into internal and external blog. An internal blog, generally accessed through the corporation's Intranet, is a weblog that any employee can view. Many blogs are also communal, allowing anyone to post to them. As for 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.

Currently, corporate blogging become a new marketing communication tool for companies. Blogs are the order of the day. They have become a way of promoting just about anything whether it may be public relations, marketing a new product, improving brand image and for research. Besides that, this is a form of advertising for company and it is excellent because it will be sought by customers when they seek to visit it again.


Corporate blogs primarily are used for national branding. They allow companies to present accurate information without the filter of the media or advertising. Marketing blogs can be used to amplify marketing messages through traditional channels. The use of
a blog allows a company to provide a destination of information for consumers, from commercials to promotional coupons, to directions on how to use products

A successful marketing through blogs creates or enters an area of interest where readers are caught up in the use and means of a product or service. In addition, blog writers who believe they can sell musings by payment have been let down, and companies that have used blogs to sell overtly and generated interest.

E-Government In Malaysia (week 6)

The Electronic Government initiative was launched to lead the country into the Information Age. It will improve how the government operates internally, as well as how it delivers services to the people of Malaysia. It seeks to improve the convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions with citizens and businesses. At the same time, it will improve information flows and processes within government to improve the speed and quality of policy development, coordination and enforcement.




To accelerate the objectives of Vision 2020, a path has already been defined through seven innovative Flagship Applications. These applications are engineered to start the MSC initiative and create a multimedia heaven for innovative producers and users of multimedia technology. Both local and foreign companies work with various government agencies to enhance the socio-economic development of Malaysia. The Multimedia Super Corridor offers a Malaysian initiative for the Information Age.

The 7 pilots of the Electronic Government Flagship Application are as follows:

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 (ES)


6. Electronic Labor Exchange (ELX)
   
7. E Syariah

Listed above are the implementations so far of our E-Government in Malaysia. Further information on each of the pilots please visits this site.

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

Prepaid Card - "Touch and Go" "Smart Tag" ( Week 5 )

Prepaid card is far from a new idea. A prepaid card looks like a credit or debit card, and gives users the ability to purchase products and services with a card but with a crucial difference - you can only spend the balance that has been preloaded onto the card. This means there is no risk of running into debt as it has no credit or overdraft facility. Examples of a prepaid card in our country are the “Touch and Go”.

Touch and Go or another more advanced card for travel the Smart Tag which is a type of credit card that are widely use by Malaysian. “PLUS” highway has come out with this service in order to convenience user during traveling. Money can be loaded on to a prepaid card by cash at a bank, Post Office, or even by another credit card. The function of touch and go is that user may pay for the highway toll faster by just tab on the card on the sensor to direct credit the toll amount. This may reduce traffic jam on the highway.

Smart Tag is another prepaid card that is slightly advanced than touch and go. You don’t have to even stop in order to pay the tolls. There is a mechanical device where you just insert the touch and go card there and place it on top of the front dash box. Whenever you paying the toll, all you have to do is just drive through the toll. The device in your car will directly connect with the sensor means that the payment is credited.

Credit Card Debts : Causes and Prevention (week 5)

A Credit Card is a system of payment named after the small plastic card issued to users of the system. In the case of credit cards, the issuer lends money to the consumer to be paid later to the merchant. It is different from a charge card, which requires the balance to be paid in full each month. In contrast, 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 debt is an example of unsecured consumer debt, accessed through ISO 7810 plastic credit cards. 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. When a consumer

has been late on a payment, it is possible that other creditors, even creditors the consumer was not late in paying, may increase the interest rates the consumer is paying. This practice is called universal default.

Causes
Sometimes the late fees, high Annual Percentage Rate (APRs), and universal default overcome consumers who frequently do not pay off their debt, and the customer declares bankruptcy. If a customer files for bankruptcy, the credit card companies are required to forgive all or much of the debt, unless such discharge of debt is successfully challenged by one or more creditors, or blocked by a bankruptcy judge on legal grounds irrespective of creditors' challenges.

Prevention

The best way to get rid of debt, experts agree, is to attack the balance with the highest annual percentage rate first. When that one is paid off, move onto the debt with the next-highest interest rate.

"The amount you owe doesn't really matter when you're paying an enormous amount of interest," "Try to pay the highest interest rate ones first. Muster all the funds available and get the debt out of your life."

Electronic Currency (week 5)

Electronic Currency or known as Electronic money that included e-money, electronic cash, digital money, digital cash or digital currency which refers to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically. Typically, this involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value systems. Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and direct deposit are examples of electronic money. Also, it is a collective term for financial cryptography and technologies enabling it.

Technically electronic or digital money is a system of debits to exchange value, within another system. Also sometimes the term electronic money is used to refer to the provider itself. Many systems will sell their electronic currency directly to the end user, such as Paypal and WebMoney, but other systems, such as e-gold, sell only through third party digital currency exchangers.

The main focuses of digital cash development are being able to use it through a wider range of hardware such as secured credit cards. Followed by, linking bank accounts that would generally be used over an internet means, for exchange with a secure micropayment system such as in large corporations (PayPal).

Although digital cash can provide many benefits such as convenience and privacy, increased efficiency of transactions, lower transaction fees, and new business opportunities with the expansion of economic activities on the Internet, there are many potential issues with the use of digital cash. The transfer of digital currencies raises local issues such as how to levy taxes or the possible ease of money laundering. There are also potential macroeconomic effects such as exchange rate instabilities and shortage of money supplies (total amount of digital cash versus total amount of real cash available, basically the possibility that digital cash could exceed the real cash available). These issues may only be addressable by some type of cyberspace regulations or laws that regulate the transactions and watch for signs of trouble.

For more infomation. Please visit http://www.wikipedia.org/

Mobile Payment Systems in Malaysia (week 5)

Introduction

Mobile payment also may refer to as mobile web payment or WAP billing. It is the collection of money from a consumer via a mobile device such as their Mobile Phone, Smart Phone, Personal Digital Assistant or known as PDA and many more. There are lots of stuff can be purchased through mobile payment. For example, Music, videos, ring tones, games, wallpapers and other digital goods.

In Malaysia, http://www.ecapay.com/ is well known online payment gateway which facilitates Malaysian domestic payment. With Malaysia Direct Debit we provide direct access to Malaysia’s domestic direct debit (online banking) pay-ments. Ecapay currently supports Hong Leong Bank, Public Bank, CIMB(Bank Bumiputra Commerce, Bank Islam, Maybank and Pospay. For more information please visit : -

http://www.ecapay.com/article7.html?gclid=CPa2kcu0iJQCFQdIegodkSdUXA

For further information, there are two primary types of mobile payments which is the older type of transaction payment which is the Premium SMS based transactional payments and now already advanced to the Mobile Web payments (WAP)

Potential

The Mobile Web payment allowed consumers to uses web pages displayed on their mobile phone to make a payment. This process is quickly replacing premium SMS based transactional payments for digital content and also enables the sale of physical goods. Using a familiar web payment model gives a number of proven benefits of such as flow on sales, high customer satisfaction and yet easy to use.

Consumer adoption strategies

Mobile payments are commonly expected to increase consumer convenience by reducing the need for coins and cash in small transactions and increasing the availability of purchase possibilities. Consumer chooses to make a mobile payment. They interact with the payment server using their mobile device to authenticate or authorize the payment. They are subsequently presented with status showing confirmation of the successful transaction or failure with a reason. Extensions to this include Near Field Communications or Contact less Payment options using additional hardware built into the mobile phone. Few researches has made where teenagers from 14-15 years old, young adults where they have entered working life and most of them are in their twenties and middle aged members of a hobby group where most of them are between 50-59 years old.

Review on My E-Commerce blog (week 4)

After reviewing http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/Internet%20Security I realize that how dangerous computer viruses and the different types of viruses may have different type of threat to our computer. According to the sites, among 130mil population internet user in China there one million of them got infected by viruses.

We should be proud that our Malaysian government has spend an amount of RM43 million to set up an International Multinational Partnership against Cyber terrorism. This centre offers the world best brain and facilities to help fight cyber security threat by eliminating viruses that roaming in the internet in our country.

On the other hand, Spamming is also one of the internet threats where its function is flooding of electronic mail systems with “junk e-mail”. Also known as unsolicited bulk messages sent through the electronic messaging systems. There are various types of spam such as PDF Spam, Piggyback Spam, and Greeting Card Spam where each of them pays a different role of their own.
Downloading movies or even mp3 in the internet may cause a threat because you may invite unwanted hackers hack into your computers. For example, one of the military pentagons was hacked and taken of 1500 emails account offline. After the incident, the US military band using e-mail anymore. Not only PC, mobile phone also is a victim Malware or known as mobile malicious software that act like a virus attack in your mobile phone.

In conclusion, we should use the internet wisely in order to prevent virus attack. Install a reliable anti virus software.

Safeguarding your Personal and Financial Data (week4)

Since that E-Commerce has been a very popular and convenient way for users, Internet users nowadays are lack on confident by revealing their personal data online, this has been a barrier to them. No worries, I have successfully found out a website that may solve your problems. http://www.onlinebackupvault.com/. This program is the one source for secure reliable online offsite data backup storage. The web was designed to be user friendly by utilizing simple but extremely powerful backup software allowing easy backups and easy restores. This site is subdivided to two types of protection which are the business services and residential services.

The business services are one source for online, offsite, secure data backup. It provides an easy automated encrypted solution for backing up all your data servers and workstation. The packages include software clients for virtually al server operating systems and server applications. Besides that, it also offers unlimited retention dates that allowed business user to hold in storage as many revisions of files as you would like.

As for the residential service, it include a plans named “Smart Search” technology which automatically backups all your files including my documents desktop and also internet favorites. A new technology “Dailintomypc” that may remotely connect to your computer and assist you in selecting your files that you would like to backup as well as show you how to view your backup logs.

Phishing. Example and Prevention (week 4)

There are 2 types of phishing. One is the Phishing Attacks and the other one is the Spear-Phishing Attacks. A simple explanation about phishing is that there are a numbers of fake online website that tries to lure online users to leak out their personal data and password, especially the credit card number.

Many have been solicited by fake eBay and Citibank requests for additional personal information. Research has found that there are occasional an e-mail from eBay advising user to update their account. There is a click button of right-click and View Source on the e-mail send and whenever you click it will link you to the other destination rather than eBay sites. This is one of the techniques that use by the phisher to hope that they will lure users with the threat of their account being closed or worse, hoping that they will provide their personal information.

There are several ways to prevent phishing which is through education. Gain additional knowledge on how to suspect corporate e-mail, even if it comes from a reliable authority. For example a company can hire security experts to spear-phish their own organization by looking for weak links and educating employees. Companies also can stop sending out links within IT, HR, and accounting-related e-mail rather than refer employees to an intranet, password-protected home page. Companies should also use secure Web forms rather than e-mail to transact personal information such as social security numbers and the like.

http://www.cnet.com/

Threat of Online Security (week 4)

The online security is the practice of protecting and preserving private resources and information on the Internet. There are several famous online security threats such as Internet Attacks, Vulnerabilities, Malicious Code, Phishing, Spam and Security risk as well as future trends. Most online users will fall as a victim to identity the theft, for example lost or stolen of credit cards of wallets. Moreover, maybe there could be careless transaction when you are buying sometime online, you may not realize that when you pay your goods by credit cards, the transaction of your personal information may accidentally leak out to others. This may allowed them record your password and use your credit card number without any limitations.

In order to make sure our data is safe, Zone Labs has released ZoneAlarm Pro 6.5 and ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 6.5, the first security software apps I know of to offer real-world identity protection, monitoring, and recovery. By partnering with an identity management company, Intersections, Zone Labs is making the promise that it will educate you, provide you the services you need to stay safe online and off, and should someone steal your identity, the team will be there to help you recover with personal assistance. Had you purchased similar services from an identity management service directly, you could easily double the purchase price of ZoneAlarm Internet Security. But for ZoneAlarm Pro and Internet Security Suite customers, the monitoring is free.

http://www.zonealarm.com/

The Revenue Modal of Google, Amazon and eBay (week 3)

Google is a major player in the online advertising industry. Every time you search Google, you will see ads displayed along with your results. Those ads are never "mixed in" with the results - there is no "pay to play" on Google which is one of the reasons Google became the most popular search engine in the first place. But the sponsored text-link ads above and to the right of the results generate a great deal of money for Google. These ads are known as "Google Adwords." Those who wish to advertise via Google can learn more on Google's Adwords page.

Google AdWords is a pay per click advertising program of Google designed that allow the advertisers to present advertisements to people at the instant the people are looking for information related to what the advertiser has to offer.

By using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is the best way to send immediate, targeted traffic to your website. It is an online advertising payment model in which payment is based on qualifying click-through. An advertiser has to pay every time his ad receives a click. The Advertisers decide the keywords relevant to their offer that should display their ad and the maximum amount they are willing to pay per click for that keyword.

As for http://www.amazon.com/, it is a well known E-Commerce nowadays. From a sellers books and CDs musical product to a multi seller which include electronics, homes, grocery and many more. The main revenue from amazon is that it sell it product online. Besides that, amazon.com allowed others to published their advertisement in their website. By charging certain commision from the advertiser, it become one of the revenue beside selling their product.

Finally, http://www.ebay.com/ are slightly different from amazon where it dont have their own product to sell. ebay is like a middle person where the website allowed others to post their product on the site and sells them. Transaction fees will be received from those who interested to post their product using the name of ebay. If the product was successfully sold, yet another commision will be received.

When a user searches Google’s search engine, ads for relevant words are shown as "sponsored link" on the right side of the screen, and sometimes above the main search results. Google generate most of the revenue from Google AdWords.

E-Commerce Failure (week 3)

No doubt about it, if there is a success there must have a failures. IBM’s World Avenue Mall is one of the main failures of E-Commerce.

The reason is because IBM was probably launched too early before online usage became sufficiently popular to justify IBM’s investment in that project. Merchants participating in the World Avenue Mall also complained that IBM did not adequately promote the project. IBM claims it learned another valuable lesson from the project that IBM’s name alone is not sufficient to bring enough customers traffic to the site to make it a success.

One year after it was launched, that failure was attributed in the press to a variety of factors including the weakness in the music industry that year leading to deep discounting by retailers because the site was not easy to use, consumers seemed to prefer ordering through traditional stores.

As a conclusion, it is not surprisingly that there are also problems which may slow down the growth of e-commerce. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission may permit telephone companies to charge special rates for accessing the Internet. U.S. state governments continue to try to collect sales and use taxes on transactions consummated over the Internet. Some traditional "brick-and-mortar" stores are feeling threatened by Internet-only retailers, and are pressuring major manufacturers to stop selling through that channel.

E-Commerce Success (week 3)

The reason of the Success in E-Commerce is because by creating a website online can direct and indirectly deal with every single person around the world because people may use global search to get to the website they desired and they can do it anytime 24/7/365. Besides that, the creator of the site may change their catalog with a fast and convenience updating. Besides, it also may shrink the market competition gap by competing with all others equal footing product with much bigger company. Also a 24 hours stalling may increase profit and reduce unnecessary phone calls and mailing. Most important is to reduce cost on labor, customer services and sales support.

In the 21st century, the United State and Canada has begun discussing the disproportionately large number of online users. According to their research, there are top four E-Commerce successes in the internet was reviewed. One and the most well known is the http://www.amazon.com/, which is an online book, CD and video retailer.

Follow by, http://www.ebay.com/ which operates an online person-to-person exchange in an auction format, permitting trading of personal items such as antiques, coins, and other items.

Thirdly, http://www.etrade.com/ which provides on-line investing services, including automated stock, bonds and mutual fund order placement at low commission rates; portfolio tracking; and real-time market commentary and analysis.

The History and the Evolution of E-Commerce (Week 3)

A simple explanation of E-Commerce is the process of buying and selling or exchanging products, services and information via computer network. Or the business activities conducted using electronic data transmission technologies, such as those used on the internet and the World Wide Web.

E-commerce began before personal computers were prevalent and has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry, but where did it come from? By looking at the evolution of e-commerce, it will be easier to judge its trends for the future.

In the early Development, E-Commerce has changed over the last 30 years. Originally, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Fund Transfer (ETF) are used to facilitate of commercial transaction electronically. During the late 1970s, businesses are using system like purchase order or invoices electronically. When Comes to 1980s, the growth and advanced of technology had lead to the acceptance of credits cards, Automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking. And comes to the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include Enterprise resource planning system or known as (ERP), data warehousing, and data mining.

Since the year 1984 until the year 2000 E-Commerce has expended tremendously. For further information about the process of evolution, you may click the link.

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

Marvelous Number 1

Welcome and thanks to step by to our blog. Our group contains 3 members who going to share our personal life and the process of learning UBAI 3013 E-Commerce in University Tunku Abdul Rahman. Our lecture and tutorial are conducted by 2 magnificent lecturers which are Mr. Hen Kai Wah and Tutorial classes conducted by Pn. Shahreen Binti Kasim.

My name is Eric Loo Tat Kinn, also known as Marvelous 1 as a nick name in this blog. I am now persuing my final year in University Tunku Abdul Rahman major in Accounting. I am a simple person who prefers to involve myself in sports. I love to play badminton. Besides sports,I am also quite in to computer online games.






During online, the websites I used to visit the most are http://www.friendster.com/. I love this site a lot because it allows me to know more friends. Besides that “Friendster” allow me to keep on update m friends, cousins and family who are in overseas by viewing their latest uploaded pictures.

Other than that, http://www.hotmail.com/ also one of my main visited website because I love to receive lots and lots of nice, cute and meaningful forwarded messages from friends.

On the entertainment part, I am on to downloading cartoon such as Japanese anime; website such as http://www.dattebayo.com/ is very popular for downloading various famous Japanese anime such as "Naruto", "Bleach" and so on.

As for my education knowledge and assignment purposes, I use to search for useful information in http://www.wikipedia.org/. This site is very famous for most higher education students to search for information while doing their assignment.

Astro nowadays are introducing "Astro on demand" packages. Website such as http://www.crunchyroll.com/ where we can watch the latest Hong Kong drama online without need to subscribe Astor packages.

Internet is booming tremendously, especially during the 21st century. It has already become a necessity to now and future generations. There are lots of things you can do on the internet that convenience everyone life’s. Example such as E-banking, where we can pay bills and now even you can renew your road tax, housing loan, money transaction and others during online, compare to the old days we have to queue up at the post office.

Online shopping has becoming become famous recently, few of the famous website such as http://www.amazon.com/ or http://www.lelong.com/. This allowed user to buy goods, grocery and so on in just a simple finger tips in front of your computer.Need to go for a movie, or having a great valentine dinner with your loves one, everything u can do it at home.

My favorite part is Online Gaming. I believe that most youngster nowadays are into online gaming, no doubt about it I am now also into playing a game named "SILKROAD ONLINE"; http://www.silkroadonline.net/ is a very famous game among all online games. Best graphic, best game play. You create your own character, level up and you can create an own guild mate and even union. Playing with all the players around the word, indirectly you may learn their cultures from any country around the world.

Marvelous Number 2

My name is Sathiyasilan A/l Subramaniam from Batu Caves ,Selangor . Most of the time I will enjoy serving the internet to accomplish my daily task and relaxing my mind by listening online songs.

The most frequent website that I usually serve http://www.yahoo.com/. This is a type of search engine that allowed me to search whatever resources that I need. It is a good site for my assignment purposes.

On the other hand, http://www.google.com/ is also similar as yahoo, as for my opinion Google is more simple and easy to use. It serve the same function like yahoo, just that it is more friendly user.

Also the most comment website that students use nowadays http://www.friendster.com/, where all my friends are save here in order for me to keep in track with them. I may also watch short clip or video in http://www.myspace.com/.

Finally, http://www.indianmoviezone.com/ . In my opinion by serving this website can communicate with my group members is much more convenient and can save resources in term of cost and time.

Marvelous Number 3

My name is Hon Fei or known as Marvelous number 3. I am 23 this year and currently I am staying at SS2, Petaling Jaya, Selangor. I am perusing my Honor Degree Major in Accounting. Now I in the final year of my studies in University Tunku Abdul Rahman.

No doubt about it, serving the internet has already one of my major activities in life. I believe everyone also the same as me. I have an account in http://www.friendster.com/. If anyone who interested, please feel free to add me.

http://www.facebook.com/ also is very famous nowadays to me where I can meet friends and play lots of different kind of games in this website. The games allowed me to challenge my friends and to won over there score.

When doing assignment, http://www.ask.com/ also is very useful for me to find resources in order to complete my assignment. Just type in whatever recourses you needed, and it will prompt out according to your request. There is also a function about this site where you are able to narrow down your search to the more specific resources you want.

Online game is already like part of my life. I love to play online game especially "Warcraft". I use to go to the internet cafe to play an LAN game with my friends. Is very challenging and nice.