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.