Corporate Blogging: How does the corporate blog helps the organizations

Corporate blogs have been launched in recent years. There are many considerations an organization needs to consider as the use of social media tools on behalf of the company. Companies like General Motors, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems have recognized the effects and importance of blogging and are now using them as a way to communicate with their customers and employees. Blogging, which started off as a forum for teenagers to express themselves, has now become very popular among businesses of all sizes.

A corporate blog helps the organization fulfill a business and also used for internal communication. They promote the sharing of information of work-related matters. Since blogs can be easily updated, they are used as a part of newsletters or company Intranets. This helps employees to keep themselves informed on all the current happenings in the organization. Blogs also allow employees to display their expertise on a particular topic, thereby becoming a recognized industry or subject "expert".

Companies can communicate with clients, employees, the media, prospective employees or customers through blogging. Corporate organizations can even conduct their public relations activities through blogging by posting press releases and updates about new company products and services on the blog. Through blogging, an organization can build its relationship with its customers and promote their products at the same time.

Corporate blogs with recently added listing like Coca-Cola Conversations authored by Phil Mooney, the historian/archivist for The Coca-Cola Company for the last 30 years.

Blogging encourages communication and allows businesses to more easily reach their customers. If used properly, corporate blogging enhances customer loyalty, and in turn can make your business more successful.

A review on a post on Legal from My E-Commerce blog

I had reviewed a post from My E-Commerce blog and post a comment on UK to get tough with illegal downloader. File sharing grew in popularity with the proliferation of high-speed Internet connections, and the relatively small file size and high-quality MP3 audio format. For many people it is as simple as opening one of many peer-to-peer file share programs, selecting the tracks, downloading and burning to a CD-ROM. Although file sharing is a legal technology with legal uses, many users use it to download and upload copyrighted materials without permission, which can be copyright infringement if done without authorization for improper purposes.

One of the big issues concerning the music industry that is revenue lost. In theory, if a person is able to download his or her favorite music off the Internet, that person would not need to purchase the CD at a local music store. Every story you read will most likely produce a different set of numbers the music industry claims it has lost due to music downloading. Therefore illegal downloading music cause the music industry does not profitable.

On the other hand, for some countries which are in Canada, downloading copyright music from peer-to-peer networks is legal but uploading those files is not. This is because, Canada has imposed fees on recording mediums like blank CDs and similar items. These levies are used to fund musicians and songwriters for revenues lost due to consumer copying. Canada has initially charged this tax on MP3 players, but a recent Supreme Court decision ruled that the law was written in such a way that these players were exempt from the tax.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Corporate blogging is another communications and marketing channel. However, unlike a press release, advertisement in a magazine or a listing in the Yellow Pages, corporate blogs are two-way communications. Corporate blogging is a relatively new idea, and the judge is still out on whether it entrust succeed. This delicate marketing mechanism may be the beginning of a new genial of advertising strategy, or it may fizzle out in a matter of months.
Many companies are looking for ways to capitalize on the blogging trend, and many of these corporations keep determined that a great way to ride the blogging wave is to keep a blog on their corporate website. These blogs are often created to appeal to the demographic that the company needs to court, and the content may have quite a lot to do with the activities of the corporation, or it may have very little to do with the company itself. Often, a corporate blog will focus on the kinds of content likely to attract the desired surfers, even if that content is not related to the product or service that the company provides.
A blog is a straightforward and now widely adopted method of posting a reverse chronological diary on the Internet. Here's a list of some of the best and most popular blogs:
* Boing Boing--A directory of wonderful things
* Gizmodo--Reviews and charts the latest gadget trends
* MobileWhack--Energetic discussions of mobile technology
* Megnut--Evolving communication through blogging since 1999

There are some advantages and disadvantages of the corporate blogging.
Advantages:
Build rapport with customer or friends. If publish a corporate blog, the company are giving their customer a channel to interact and get to know about their product, competitor and etc that they are familiar and comfortable with.
Provide feedback and suggestions from key constituents. Corporate blogging gives insights to what people are saying about our products, brand, and competitors. These insights come in the forms of comments on the blog or commentary and discussions that take place on other blogs.

Disadvantages
There is a risk that an ill-judged comment could be seized upon by the media or disgruntled investors
There are plenty of areas of business where people are judged on their knowledge, and the competitive edge - and thus the safety of everyone's jobs - is the thickness of a single good idea.
Time consume and expensive.

Corporate blogs are a new, powerful marketing communications tool for any organization. It doesn’t matter what kind of organization you are: small or large, SMEs or corporates, for-profit or non profit.

Things to take note to prevent e-auction fraud when a consumer participating in an e-auction

An auction is a market mechanism by which buyers make bids and sellers place offers. Electronic auctions which are auction conducted online. Its have been in existence for several years on local area networks and were started on the Internet in 1995. According to Internet Fraud Watch, e-auction fraud accounted for 70 percent of the e-commerce fraud that occurred in 2001. Therefore we must have some prevention of it.

The prevention of e-auction fraud:

Become familiar with the auction website

Look into the websites protection policies. Never assume you are protected from auction fraud.

Feedback Forum
For the eBay.com that provide Feedback Forum. It allows registered buyers and sellers to build up their online trading reputations. It provides users with the ability to comment on their experiences with other individuals.

Do not give out your personal data
Never ever give out your social security number, drivers’ license number, credit card number, or bank account information until you have thoroughly checked out the seller and the escrow service.

Before placing a bid, learn as much as you can about the seller
If you can’t find anything out about the seller, than avoid doing business with them. Never fall for promises of better deals by moving away from the original auction website.

Verification system
Through verification systems can help us to confirming the identity and evaluating the condition of an item. With verification, neutral third parties will evaluate and identify an item through a variety of means. For example, some collectors have their item “DNA tagged” for identification purposes. This provides a way of tracking an item if it changes ownership in the future.

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

“E-Government” refers to the use by government agencies of information technologies that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. Traditionally, the interaction between a citizen or business and a government agency took place in a government office. E-government aims to make the interaction between government and citizens (G2C), government and business enterprises (G2B), and inter-agency relationships (G2G) more friendly, convenient, transparent, and inexpensive.
These services include driver licensing tests, bankruptcy searches, renewal of driving licenses, summons and utility bill payments and other services. The implementation of E-government started since the initiation of multimedia super corridor (MSC) by the Malaysian government. It will improve the government operates internally as well as how it delivers service to the people of Malaysia. It seeks to improve the convenience, accessibility, & quality of interaction with citizen and business.
There are many current application is being launch by the e-government, such as online renewal driving licenses, electronic filling of income tax forms, sms alert on e-government services and other.
I encountered some securities problem, such as user information stealing by hacker via internet, the user identity with the same name will cause a crash in the system. The language barrier is one of the problems. Most of the government website is in malay version, this will facing by the foreigner, who want to renewal their licenses.
Encourage way of using e-government service:
1. Save time.
2. Advertise by telecommunication to attract citizens
3. Provide consultation service to user who is lack of computer knowledge.
4. Effective and efficiency
As a conclusion, e-government service is tending to increase the relationship between the citizen and government.

A review on a post on e-tailing from My E-Commerce blog

In my opinion, Touch 'n Go or TnG smart card had bring a lot of benefits to us which makes our life become more convenient.

It is easier to get a card. A standard card can be purchase at the price of RM20. It consist of RM10 deposit value and RM10 usage amount. User can reload the card at toll plazas, train stations, Automated Teller Machines, Cash Deposit Machines, Petrol kiosks and at authorised third party outlets. Reload denomination is ranging from RM20 to RM500.

This card can be use in many ways such as toll fees, parking, public transport and theme park. It is used by Malaysian toll expressway and highway operators as the sole electronic payment system (EPS). In this cases, Touch 'n Go systems are designed to process up to 800 vehicles per hour, if it is use together with SmartTAG (a non-stop electronic toll collection system), which will be able to process up to 1,200 vehicles per hour. This will be able to ease the congestion at toll. This is very convenient for the consumers which they need not to prepare for exact change or wait for the teller to give back the small change. It is also can reduce the cycle time especially during the peak hours.

The Application of Pre-Paid Cash Card for Consumers

A prepaid credit card which is not like a credit card, because it does not have credit is offered by the card issuer. For instances, when the card-holder using the card to spends money which has been "stored" via a prior deposit by themselves. However, it is can be used in similar ways with credit-card such as Visa or MasterCard but make sure it have money inside your bank. With prepaid credit cards you are not charged any interest but you are often charged monthly fees after an arbitrary time period.

The prepaid cash card using in Hong Kong is the Octopus card which is a stored value smart card used to transfer electronic payments in online or offline systems. The Octopus card system has since grown into a widely used in Hong Kong for purchases on virtually all public transports.It is available at over 1,000 different Service Providers including convenience stores, supermarkets, fast-food restaurants, on-street parking meters, car parks, and other point-of-sale applications such as service stations and vending machines.

Octopus is also used for office and residential premises access control. As each Octopus has a unique ID number, cardholders only need to register their Octopus at the management office, and the ID will be stored in the central security system. Therefore who are not residents or employees will not be able to gain access to the building.

Besides, Octopus has been introduced into the school environment which is convenient to the students and making their school life easier. Students can now use Octopus to buy food at tuck shops and kiosks, for roll call and for miscellaneous school payments.

Octopus provides an Automatic Add Value Service (AAVS) through which your Octopus is automatically reloaded by debiting your credit card account with HK$250 or HK$500 (to be decided by customers upon application) as soon as the value falls below HK$0.

Electronic currency (payloadz)

Payloadz offer an easy & powerful e-commerce service. Payloadz are sold downloadable products such as music, software, e-books and other files. It manages the transaction through eBay and provides the server space to store the files.
Anyone of us can use payloadz to sell any digital files online. We just need to set up a payloadz account & paypal account. With the account configured, we can ready to enter the products that we wish to sell. There will have an instruction to assist us.
When customers browse our web site & decide to buy something, they imply click the “buy now” button that adds the item to their shopping cart, and when they’re done shopping. They click the “check out” button & are prompted for their paypal account information. After the sale, payloadz will send an e-mail to the customer & provides a link to download the product. The link serves a traditional pop-up box so customer can “save” or “open” files. Meanwhile, payloadz also send e-mail to us that let us know that someone purchased our product.
For security, PayLoadz supports keys that require customers to validate and register their products. PayLoadz also offers an option to reference "remote key scripts" that are running on remote servers to create keys.
To tell what we have doing, PayLoadz offers a complete selling history that lists transaction IDs, dates of sale, item numbers, item names, quantities purchased and customers' names and e-mail addresses. There's also a product report that tells us the quantities of products sold and provides a purchase history.

Credit Card debts: Causes and Prevention

Nowadays, people like to be a credit card holder, because it can bring them convenient and attraction. On the other hand, it also can bring over some trouble for them such as bankruptcies.

First, unemployment is one of the causes. Households are forced to use credit card for groceries, utilities and some expenses purposes to maintain current lifestyle when the main breadwinner of the household has loss his job and could not find a new job during short periods. This may lead to a rise in debt when expenses are not cut down in line with the reduction in income. Second, is gambling. Today, gambling has become part of entertainments in our life. It is hard to stop when it becomes addictive. Thus, it will surely lead to a financial disaster if borrowing money through credit card for gambling. Third is divorce. Fees that must spend for divorce such as lawyer fee, division of assets between husband and wife, proceeds given to children are the way to rack up huge debts by using credit card if it is the gap between the expenses and income. Moreover, it will lead to reduction in income because divorce may force some people to quit their job and to have a walk in other countries.

It's not that hard to get a credit card, but we want to make sure that we are at a decent annual percentage rate, that won't bankrupt us when we see the first payment being due. Here is some prevention method for credit card debt. Which we just sign up for companies that is willing to offer us a low percentage rate. Make a budget. Create a budget that includes monthly bills, miscellaneous expenses, try to avoid the expensive purchases and do not spend it on unimportant things. Self control and discipline. One of the best practices is to have a direct set up so that able to pay back the full amount each month and use in emergencies. Thus, self control and discipline to keep these cards in wallet and would not overspend.

Credit card can bring us pros and cons. Card holder should use it in the smart way, and stay with a well financial situation.

Credit Card debts

Nowadays, many people are having credit card. They are using future money to get their current material enjoyment. But once you fall into the credit card debts, which in turn affect the rest of your life. Actually credit card can be means as debt and financial instability. Therefore, more and more people are getting debts.

The reason can be such person less income but more expenses. It can be happens when he lost his job but monthly expenses are not cut down in line with the reduction in income. This obviously leads to a rise in debt and forced to use credit card to fulfill their desire.

Poor money management is also one of the best reasons why so many families accumulate lots of debt. You might be spending hundreds of dollars every month towards items that are useless and have no value in your life, yet you do not realize it. While your money is going towards purchasing useless items, you might also be charging your necessary purchases on your credit card, forcing you to pay interest on these purchases every month.

Some people are too relying on credit card. Credit cards should be valued for their convenience, but you should not be using them as extra income. If you are using credit cards to purchase something to make ends meet, then you may be having serious debt trouble. If you do not have enough money to pay for something in cash, then you really do not have enough to pay for it via credit card either.

On the other hand, when some serious or important matter has happened that require a certain amount of fund to assist such as medical expenses, you use your credit card because you do not have enough money in your savings account. Thus, it can also cause a person suffering credit card debts.

The best method for prevention of credit card debt is teaching our youngest generation about money before they are qualifies for a credit card. There is a case show that students are entering college without having a personal finance class or knowing how to balance a checkbook. Yet once students arrive on campus credit card issuers are eager to sign them up. College students are racking up the bills. Some even drop out of college to find a job so they can pay their credit card bills. And those who do graduate typically enter adulthood with thousands of dollars in credit card debt and student loans. Thus, they learn how to manage finances the less likely they will be to fall into credit card and debt problems as an adult.

In order to avoid any debts incurred by using credit card, we should pay the balance in full. This is important in keeping control of your credit cards. In cases of emergencies where your emergency fund would not cover the whole amount you need to charge, experts say at least pay more than the required minimum payment. This means that while you have the convenience of using the card in emergencies or while abroad, you have a strong incentive not to let your lending get out of hand.

However, credit card holders should manage finance of themselves. They have to determining his/her monthly income and expenses needed and avoid having to put a large amount of debts on a credit card in time of a crisis. It is to help them keep on track set goals and put motivators in place.

The threat of online security

Web-based services, such as social networks MySpace and Facebook, are becoming major targets for hackers to seeking your personal information. Due to our personal information have display many on social networking web sites and office workers upload more sensitive data to online software programs, the hackers have this opportunity to steal our data.

I have been read news from online that there is a case, the names and contact information for tens of thousands of customers of two were stolen from a web sites called Salesforce.com, which provides online customer management software for those two companies. The incident occurred after a hacker tricked a Salesforce employee into disclosing a password. The attack on consumer sites is getting more unsecured on our privacy.

It may be harder to prevent attacks that exploit the Web-based lists of friends and business contacts that users save in widely used services and social networks. Now there are new hacking strategies that the users are unable to detect them and also approach to maximize damage without being caught. These include division of labor by hacking expertise and wider use of black-market sites to hire programmers and purchase professional malware-writing tools.

For consumers, it is not just their profiles on social networks that can be mined for personal information. Smartphones and e-mail applications that are store more valuable data, could present tempting targets. In the corporate world, criminals are hunting for more of the valuable information stored on companies' servers. For example, hackers access to credit- and debit-card of the retailer's customer according to court documents filed by Visa and MasterCard.

Therefore, do not give away any valuable or sensitive personal information on social network or within messages to other members of the network. And do not click on any links in social network messages from people you did not know. Actually there is no reputable company will ask for your password, account number, or other log-in information via e-mail or instant message. Thus, any situation like this, you should be aware.

Phishing - Examples and its prevention methods

Phish is an Internet scam designed to cheat the recipient into revealing credit card, passwords, social security numbers and other personal information to someone who intend to use them for fraudulent purposes. For instance, the investors may submit their personal information to the phish website because it has the power influence the investors’ thinking that they are buying something from a real business. The criminals then use the personal information for their own purposes, or sell the information to other criminal parties.


The example of the phishing case is Paypal that is a spelling mistakes in the email and the presence of an IP address in the link (visible in the tooltip under the yellow box) are both clues that this is a phishing attempt. Another giveaway is the lack of a personal greeting, although the presence of personal details would not be a guarantee of legitimacy.

The damage caused by phishing ranges from denial of access to email to substantial financial loss. This style of identity theft is becoming more popular, because of the readiness with which unsuspecting people often disclose their personal information to phishers, including credit card numbers, social security numbers, and mothers' maiden names. There are also fears that identity thieves can add such information to the knowledge they gain simply by accessing public records. Once this information is acquired, the phishers may use a person's details to create fake accounts in a victim's name. They can then spoil the victims' credit, or even refuse the victims access to their own accounts.


There have some prevention for the phishing cases:
• Prevents an attack before it happens with Early Warning System® and tools for uncovering fraudsters while they’re still in the planning stages of an attack

• Detects attacks in progress by monitoring and analyzing the industry’s widest range of intelligence sources, customer reports, and more

• Moderate loss and risk with quick effective response using a network of strategic alliances with the broadest worldwide coverage

• Arms enterprises with critical intelligence for ongoing, proactive defense, with a web portal for daily monitoring, weekly reports on industry-wide phishing activity, and details on specific attacks for customer analysis

the application of 3rd party certification programme in malaysia

Verisign is the trusted provider of internet infrastructure services for the digital world. Nowadays, companies & consumers rely on internet infrastructure to communicate and conduct commerce with confidence. Internet infrastructure provides a critical layer of intelligence & security that enables key transactions, protects data, & safely delivers information across myriad protocols & devices.
Verisign is the leading Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates authority enabling secure e-commerce, communications, and interactions for Web sites, intranets, and extranets. SSL technology protects Web site and makes it easy for the Web site visitors to trust in three essential ways:
1. Enables encryption of sensitive information during online transactions.
2. Contains unique, authenticated information about the certificate owner.
3. Enables encryption of Each SSL Certificate contains unique, authenticated information about the certificate owner.

An SSL Certificate establishes a private communication channel enabling encryption of the data during transmission. Encryption scrambles the data, essentially creating an envelope for message privacy. An encryption method is established with a unique session key and secure transmission can begin. True 128-bit SSL Certificates enable every site visitor to experience the strongest SSL encryption available to them
.
When the SSL handshake occurs, the browser requires authentication information from the server. By clicking the closed padlock in the browser window , the Web site visitor sees the authenticated organization name. In high-security browsers, the authenticated organization name is prominently displayed and the address bar turns green when an Extended Validation SSL Certificate is detected. If the information does not match, the browser displays an error message or warning.

VeriSign Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates meet the highest standard in the Internet security industry for Web site authentication. EV SSL Certificates give high-security Web browsers information to clearly display a Web site’s organizational identity. The high-security Web browser’s address bar turns green and reveals the name of the organization that owns the SSL Certificate and the SSL Certificate Authority that issued it.
Today and every day, verisign infrastructure services enable and protect number of transactions over the world, and helping to drive dramatic information in the way people work, play and live.

Case of Phishing

Phishing is the process of attempting to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details. It is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging and often directs users to enter details at a website. Here has a case of phishing in people’s account and this was happened in India.

Many people will also use the internet for their banking needs. A guy has been checked his account by online but his amount in account was suddenly different after few days his had checked and no sign where the money had gone. It was later revealed that this guy had been a victim of phishing attack on ICICI Bank and the money had been transferred to another person.

He had given his password and name online by replying to an email sent by the hackers. The hackers then logged into the victim’s account and put in their mobile number instead of his. So that, when they did make the transfer, the message alerting the victim of the transfer would go out to their mobile and not his. Once the password and user name are with the phisher, it's only a matter of a few minutes before your money is transferred from your account to the phishers.

Due to most of the banks in India do not have an emergency response team for phishers and they don't respond as fast as an American or European bank. Thus, phishers are targeting to Indian banks because they get more user names and passwords than any other banks.

In order to keep your money safe and to protect yourself from such attacks, we should:
-Be on the alert when a banking e-mail uses dramatic information to get you to react immediately.
-Be ware of e-mails from shopping websites offering free goods. It might be a scam to get your banking details.
-Avoid filling up any forms in email messages that ask for personal financial information. You should only communicate information such as credit card numbers or account information via a secure website.
-Do not use the links in an email to get to any web page, if you suspect the message might not be reliable.
-Finally, clicking on phishing sites may install a spying device on your computer. Downloading an anti-spyware programme will help.

Therefore, be aware of phishing that can attack you. God bless you.

How to safeguard our personal and financial data

In this new and high technology era, internet users increase day by day so as the internet hackers and virus can be committed through computer or internet. Therefore, we need to install the security system on computer thus to protect our personal and financial data would not attached by third party. There are several ways to safeguard our personal and financial data:

Resists open unknown attachments
Never open an attachment or click on a link sent to you by an unknown party. Attachments can contain viruses and links can lead unsuspecting users to dummy sites where they are asked to input financial information.

Do not use the same password for every thing on the Internet
Yes, we all hate passwords, but hackers love people who don’t use passwords. Create passwords that combine 6-8 numbers and letters, upper and lower case and just throwing in a number or symbol at the end will make it hundreds of times hard for a person to crack your password.

Connect to secure wireless networks
If you have a home wireless network, secure it quickly! Connecting to non-secure wireless networks is asking for trouble. Therefore, resist logging on the online banking to check your bank balance when working from insecure hotel wireless networks.

Make sure anti-virus and anti-spyware are installed and up-to-date
This, of course, should be obvious. But most people usually stop there and don’t install any anti-spyware programs. That is a big mistake! As for anti-virus protection, Symantec and Norton antivirus are popular choices.

Lock your computer at home and at the office
This is another one of those tips that most people do not think about, especially at your office. If you leave for lunch and your computer is just on without a password-protected screen saver, what will stop other people to steal your data? It may not seem likely, but it can very well happen and it’s better to put a password on your screen saver.

Remember, don’t be afraid of the Internet, it’s a great way to make your life easier and can be a safe place as long as you follow some simple common sense rules. Even if you never use a computer, your identity can still be stolen from the paper that your throw out in your trash!

Phishing

A phishing technique was described in detail as early as 1987, while the first recorded use of the term "phishing" was made in 1996. Phishing is the process of attempting to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by hidden as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Malware and pharming are the common tools which use for steal information.
Phishing is an e-mail fraud method in which the phisher sends out legitimate-looking email in an attempt to gather personal and financial information from recipients.
The damage caused by phishing ranges from denial of access to e-mail to substantial financial loss. This style of identity theft is becoming popular, because of the readiness with which unsuspecting people often disclose personal information to phishers, including credit card numbers. Once this information is acquired, the phishers can use the victim’s details to create a fake account to debt, use their credit to buy valuable goods.
Since phishing is based on simulate, preventing it depends on some reliable way to determine a website's real identity. People can take steps to avoid phishing attempts by slightly modifying their browsing habits. When contacted about an account needing to be "verified”, it is a sensible precaution to contact the company to check whether the e-mail is legitimate.
The legitimate e-mail messages from companies to their customers contain an item of information that is not readily available to phishers. Some companies, for example PayPal, always address their customers by their username in e-mails, so if an e-mail addresses the recipient in a generic fashion ("Dear PayPal customer") it is likely to be an attempt at phishing or E-mails from banks and credit card companies often include partial account numbers.
Preventions method

· There are provided a phishing-prevention method capable of preventing phishing-related accidents from which an Internet user suffers and storage medium storing a computer program source for executing the method
· People can be trained to have their suspicion aroused if the message does not contain any specific personal information. However, used personalized information, which makes it unsafe to assume that the presence of personal information alone guarantees that a message is legitimate. .
· When a user attempts an access to a specific website through an e-mail and a web browser or inputs his/her own personal information directly in e-mail or the like to transmit the related information to outside, the website to be accessed of a specific server is analyzed in order to warn the user in advance so that the user can select whether to actually access thereto, prior to accessing to the website, if it is in danger.
· When the user attempts an access to a website similar to a famous or known website address, the method of the present invention warns the user of a possibility that will be a phishing website so that the user can select whether to actually access thereto.
· When the user makes use of the function of inputting personal information directly in e-mail to transmit the related information directly to a specific server, the method of the present invention transfers a warning therefore to the user so that the user can select whether to actually transmit the related information.
In making all the warnings and the user's selections, familiar and easily-expressed information associated with the website is provided to the user for correct judgment.

An example of an E-commerce success and its causes

According to my research, there are 68-80% of e-commerce business fails with in the initial five years of their existence. These are because it generating a variety of activities, not enough profit to maintain the company. Another reason is the inability to clearly understand the market demand and the needs of the customer and their buying habits is another reason for failure. On the other hand, the pricing strategy is a very important aspect that either leads such company to failure or success in e-commerce. Therefore, in order to avoid failure in e-commerce, the aspects I’m mention above should be avoid and probably control.

Dell is one of the good examples of success in e-commerce.

Dell is one of the world’s top providers of computer products and services to businesses and consumers via online. Due to its efficient supply chain management, Dell is capable of shipping a PC within 24 hours of receiving an order. During rapid expansion of internet, Dell was quick to set up the e-commerce processes that would enable it to also sell directly online to customers. Selling online allows the whole process to be automated and more efficient.

There is full product information provided in online that help the consumers to make decision. They can simply follow the easy and automatic instructions and also customize the computer you want. Besides of that, it also gives variety of options on the method of payment. Once manufactured, it only takes three or four days for delivery. All of the systems relating to the sale are done through e-commerce: order placement, order tracking, payment processing, inspection, testing and delivery.

Dell’s approach to e-commerce creates the benefits of face-to-face contact between the buyer and the seller. This ensures that staff can be focused on delivering the quality product and providing excellent customer service and support. Customers can create and view their service records online. This includes product support, shipment and delivery dates. Each purchase comes with a service tag code, which can track the model bought and its service requirements. This allows Dell customer service representatives to quickly and efficiently handle requests. This level of 24 hour customer service and fast response time helps Dell build strong customer relations. The website is also used as a communication tool for news, press releases and general information to help customers, employees, the media and prospective employees find out more about the company.

If you interested to ratify the successful of Dell in e-commerce, you can surf to http://www.dell.com/.

The history and evolution of E-commerce

Before the internet was booming, commerce of a company was carried out face-to-face. But nowadays, electronic commerce, also known as e-commerce, assisting many organizations operate business that provide speed and convenient. On the other hand, customers make purchase over electronic signals, usually through the Internet. In another word, if a customer interested a product on a web site, they can buy it over the web. It is more convenient for customers to compare and find a best price on goods and also it gives customers the opportunity to purchase special items they could not find. So how an e-commerce became part of a way of our life?

When the e-commerce started, the organizations were using phone commerce; fax commerce and follow by internet commerce. Actually e-commerce was started during the 1960s with the earliest example electronic funds transfer (EFT), which allows organizations to transfer funds between one another electronically. Then another technology electronic interchange (EDI) was introduced. During the 1990s, the internet was opened for commercial use. It was the period that World Wide Web (WWW) begins, and the trend of rapid personal computer (PCs) usage growth. Due to the rapid expansion of the WWW network, e-commerce software and the peer business competitions, large number of dot-com and Internet starts-ups appeared. These three important factors made e-commerce possible and successful in 1991s.

However, in the beginning of 1994s, Netscape with its point-and-click Web browser that provided the users a simple browser to surf the Internet and a safe online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer and two of the biggest names in e-commerce, eBay and Amazon.com are launched in 1995s. During 1998s, DSL, or Digital Subscriber Line, provides fast, always-on Internet service to subscribers across California. This prompts people to spend more time, and money, online.

People start to define the term of e-commerce as the process of purchasing goods and services over the Internet using secure connections and electronic payment services during 2000s when a large number of business companies in the United States and Western Europe represented their services in the World Wide Web. Although the dot-com collapse in 2000s results many of e-commerce companies disappeared, the “brick and mortar” retailers recognized the advantages of electronic commerce and began to add such capabilities to their web sites.

Nowadays, e-commerce became popular to everyone. You will not be limited by size, scale, customizability, currency or even language when doing business over the World Wide Web. Likewise, you can easily shopping via internet without having to go out.

The history & evolution of E-commerce

The electronic commerce (E-commerce) refers to all forms of business activities conduct across internet. This includes intranet and extranet, online advertising, business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C) and etc. Its addresses the need of organizations and consumers to cut costs while improving the quality of services and increasing the speed of services delivery by using internet.

The E-commerce was come from development of the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). EDI is a set of standard developed in the 1960’s, which gave an opportunity for users to exchange information and do electronic transactions. In those days, there was a several format of EDI available, therefore companies still might not be able to interact with each other. In 1984s, ASC X 12 standards become stable and reliable in transferring large amount of transactions.

The next major step occurred in 1992s where the Mosaic web-browser becomes the first ‘point and click’ browser. The Mosaic browser was quickly adapted into a downloadable browser, and Netscape which allowed easier access to E-commerce. In 1998s, the development of Red Hat Linux was another step in E-commerce growth. Linux gave user another choice in a platform other then windows that was reliable and open source. In February 2000, there are hackers attacked some major players of e-commerce, including yahoo and Ebay, it gave a signal that it is a need for improved security.

Evolution of e-commerce can be attributed to a combination of regulatory reform and technological innovation. E-commerce of today took off with the arrival of world wide web (WWW) and browsers in early 1990s, and the online activities are more than one.
Today, businesses have been engaging in a form of E-commerce. There are no more realized on the paper documentation which consumes a great deal of time & higher printing cost. Using E-commerce, it can create a set of standards format for transmitting that information electronically, businesses were able to reduce error, prevent risk & eliminate the unused data. Using security to secure the company profile and only allow user to login with a password. DSL which has helped to expand the volume and capacity of communications that helped in the process of rapid growth. As a result, the internet and electronic data exchange are becoming valuable tools in the supply chain.

Discuss how e-commerce can reduce cycle time, improve employees' empowerment and facilitate customer support

Reduce Cycle Time
E-Commerce is the secure electronic exchange of data which formerly had to be dealt with manually and which can reduce the cycle time. It also can shorten the time takes to complete a productivity activity from the business. By using e-commerce to do the business activity can drive down the time it takes to develop and deliver new products, dramatically reduce inventory and manufacturing time. Besides that, it is also reducing the sales cycle time because the seller can sell their product through their company website. Thus, it is eliminate the time to meet out the customer.

Improve Employees' Empowerment
E-commerce can eliminate the old-fashioned paper work by add in the modern networking technology. For instance, the local area network can link each employee's computer together with the management to perform their task together. Employees have giving an autonomy right to posting notices, get faster and more reliable access to file, posting catalog via internet, and receive order from customers by mail and collection of customer data. In this case, employees can perform efficiency and effective work in order to achieve the customers' satisfaction.

Facilitate Customer Support
Through e-commerce, it opens a world of businesses to customers, hence making the world of business easier. From this model which is clearly shows that e-Business provides opportunities for interaction, transaction and profitability in back office to its customer. In this case, these help customers buying and selling goods though e-commerce more easily. Beside that, websites with interactive features such as chat line, bulletin board, email etc. These facilities help to keep the customer in touch with the "real person" in the business. This is because, automatic email responses provide customers with instant information to their inquiries and help create more sales by answering general queries more quickly and comprehensively.

In conclusion, e-commorce had been commonly and widespreadly used and had bring benefit to the public. If e-commerce had been correctly and properly used it can stabilise and improve the country's economic.

An example of an e-commerce failure & its causes

With the changing trends of globalization and the advancement of modern technology, the development of e-commerce has boomed in the past few years. This Internet based business has motivated many entrepreneurs to be a part of this monetary potential world. However, not all companies are succeeded in this business world handles by the advanced technology. Companies usually fail to achieve complete success and are not able to face the challenges in market via Internet.

The example of the e-commerce failure is Pets.com. It is a former dot-com enterprise that ceased operations in November of 2000. Pets.com was a short-lived online business that sold pet accessories and supplies direct to consumers over the World Wide Web.

The main reason of the Pets.com failure which is they would not be able to raise further capital. Therefore, they aggressively undertook actions to sell the company. This is because they were unable to give their customer a reason to buy their pets instead of the local pet store. Besides, they also face the challenge of shipping costs when they compete with real-world stores. In the end, Pets.com was forced to sell its pet food far below cost to remain competitive, which is hardly a sustainable business model. Pets.com failed to understand the consumer and thus failed to position the company in accordance with anything other than price.

Maybe i'm a pessimtics

Life is difficult! Life is complex! Why life can be full of harassment and suspicion? Why we cannot simply work out our life by happy and relax? These negative questions that are me always feel suffering when i face something unhappiness. It is me, Lai Mun. Maybe this negative views are bad but i clearly know that it should be accept.Thus, when i suffering unhappy matter, i like to follow my family always and have activities with them such as shopping, watch movie but i would not tell them what i'm upseting. This is known as the one of my hobby, have any activities with family. It will let me more comfort n happy.

Since i'm the student of Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman from Sungai Long and i'm come from Seremban, thus every friday, after classes are finished, i must go back hometown and have gathering with my best friends which are already know each others for many years. I will have no stress when gather with them. They can let me forget about anything i'm feeling unhappy, told me many knowledge that cannot get it from book, and they never use me. We have no an attitude that because you have benefit for me then i should please you. This just is true friends. Therefore, go for vacation is the one of my hobby because every semester break, i will also have vacation with my best friends.

I will always online also. It may also counted as my hobby because it can let us know more and new information immediately and recognise more friends. The websites i visited the most such as http://www.friendster.com/, because we can add each other as friend and can know how well of each others from the life picture we have posted. http://www.google.com/ and http://www.yahoo.com/, i'm appreciate it bacause these 2 websites help me so much when i search for information for my assignments and even increase any knowledge such as game, medicine and geography. The websites that i have visited for fun is http://www.youtube.com/ and http://www.iask.com/. Youtube website can let us watch many video or fantastic clip. Moreover of iask website is a chinese website for us to listen song, and also can search any information you want. On top of the activities as the purposes i surf of these websites , sometime i would accessed internet for play games, read news, update my friendster's profile, and etc.

my first blog {@.@}

Oh my god! One of my subjects, E-commerce requires me to create a blog. I’ve never write a blog before, and I am feeling quite confused. What should I write? Introduce myself in a formal or in a funny way?Hihi, my name is Yu Ling, a common girl come from a small town called ‘Bahau’. I like to exercise very much as it could help me to reduce my stress and further increase my relationship with my friends. Swimming is one of my favorites. Every week, my friends and I will meet up to go for swimming and jogging. I will share my happiness and sadness with them and ask for advice from them.In this modern environment, most people will use internet for communicating, business or entertainment purpose. Those websites are very useful in our daily life. The top 5 websites that I prefer are http://www.friendster.com/ where I can view my friend’s blog and photo they posted through friendster and to know their recent condition and leave some comments for them.http://www.youtube.com/, http://www.baidu.com/ enables me to watch the latest movie, search for new songs and view some interesting video clips. http://www.google.com/ and http://www.hotmail.com/ are the most helpful ones. I can frequently check my mail through Hotmail and search for information when I do not have any idea for my assignment through Google. Besides that, I like to online chatting with friends who stays in a different location, play online games, e-banking, read the latest news and listening to new songs.

ling's personal blog

hello...I am Lim Ee Ling, a young girl from Johor, Batu Pahat. The reason I create this blog is to introduce myself to all of you which is required as a part of my assignment topic. I am now studying in University Tunku Abdul Rahman taking Bachelor in Commerce Accounting course.Let me tell you about my hobby now...My hobby is swimming. I enjoy swimming very much because it can help me to reduce my weight. Once in a week I will go swimming with my classmate. Besides this, I prefer to online whenever I am free. My favourite website that I always visit are http://www.friendster.com/, the reason why I visit friendster website is because I like to know more friends and to upload my photo to share with my friends. Besides, when I am boring, I will play games from http://www.yahoo.com/, and also I will visit http://www.baidu.com/ as to download favourite or new song. I have two email addresses from different website which are Yahoo's email from http://www.yahoo.com/ and Hotmail's email from http://www.hotmail.com/. I frequently check my mail and forward mails which I think it is meaningful. Most of the time, I also will visit hotmail to search information for my assignment. Besides that, I will use internet to do the online banking. Through the ebanking system help me faster and easily to paid my bill and transfer money. The bank which I always use is the public bank and the website is http://www.pbebank.com/. Through the internet I can do a lot of things such as downloading new songs, chat with friend, play online games, check my mails, and paid bills via ebanking. Therefore, I like to online because it could help me to go through all my free time.