Review on a post on Legal from My Ecommerce Blog

From this blog post, i found that it is interesting. By using iPhone to check the student attendance whether the student is present a school or not. This can prevent student making fake attendance such like helping friends to sign on the attendance. Besides that, its also have downloading learning material function such like lecture notes, tutorial questions and so on. Although the school high already use such high technology device to take attendance but the student still can cheat on the attendance by bringing friend's iphone to school. In my opinion, the iPhone can add in biometric application- fingerprint. Fingerprint can't be borrow or bring by other people to school for taking the attendance.

I think this application can be apply to Malaysian's school. Besides can prevent absentees cheat on the attendance, it also can help school to track where is the student is. This can reduce those secondary school students from going to cybercafe or shopping at the school time.

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

E-Government also known as e-gov, digital government, online government or transformational government, which is used to refer to the use of information and communication technology to provide and improve government services, transactions and interactions with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government.

Most of the e-government implementations of the project are currently in progress. The detailed objectives and status of each of the e-government implementation are:

1. 
   Generic Office Environment (GOE)
   It introduces a fully integrated, distributed and scalable office environment that leverages use of multimedia information technology. This will enable efficient communication, allowing collaboration across all workers, and ensuring right information reaching the right people in a timely manner.



2. 
   Electronic Procurement (eP) Project
   Its aim is to re-engineer, automate, and transform current procurement system. The project would cover central contract, tender, and direct purchase. The electronic procurement project has taken off the introduction of ePerolehan and can be accessed at http://www.eperolehan.com.my/.




3. 
   Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)
   This e-government project will provide a single interface for government employees to perform human resource function effectively and efficiently.



4. 
   Project Monitoring System (PMS)
   This system is one of the e-government projects that will create a mechanism to monitor project implementation throughout various government agencies and statutory bodies.





5. 
   Electronic Services Directory (e Services)
   This project is a pilot project that allows citizens of Malaysia to engage in transactions with government and utilities payments such as telephone and electricity bills, police summons, Road and Transport Department (RTD) services and others.



6. 
   Electronic Labor Exchange (ELX)
   It improves the mobilization of human resources and optimize work force utilization through systematic matching of job seekers to job vacancies.



7. 
   E-Syariah
   This project main objective is to improve the quality of service in Syariah courts.

Citizen’s adoption strategies
Government can make the advertisement through different ways in order to get the attention of the public and increase the people’s knowledge of e-government project and the availability of electronic services online. Besides that, the government also need to make sure the information provided to the users is always accurate, relevant and timeliness. The government also needs get the public confidence by securing the confidential information of the public. By increasing the customer satisfaction, the rate of e-government adoption will also increase.

A Discussion on E-learning offered in Malaysian Universities: Prons and Cons from the student perspective

Electronic learning (E-learning) is a term for all types of technology-enhanced learning (TEL), where technology is used to support the learning process. In some instances, no face- to- face interaction takes place. E-learning is used interchangeably in a wide variety of contexts.

There are more advantages than disadvantages of having E-learning for a student. Lets discuss this matter.

Advantages:

1. Save travelling time and cost
They can save time from travelling to an university to study. Travelling costs might be very costly.

2. Time flexibility
Student can get online resources, communicate with his tutor or class mates, send his query and write term paper at any time he can get access to the Internet.

3. Suite different level of students
Some students can adapt faster while some adapt slower. Students have the option to select learning materials that meets their level of knowledge and interest by using E-learning.

4. More Response
Students in a large classroom seldom response to the lecturer. Therefore, E-learning helps student to interact more with the lecturer.

5. Fewer penalties from non-compliance
For example, students have to sign their attendances and without doing that, they will be bar for taking final exams in UTAR. E-learning helps students that often skip classes from such penalties.

6. Disease
E-learning keeps students away from diseases such as SARS and H1N1. These disease is easily infect from human to human such as by flu or cough. om response to the lecturer. Therefore, E-learning helps student to interact more with the lecturer.



Disadvantages:

1. Low motivation
Students with low motivation often work slow and fall behind others. Besides that, the students also will late for the submitment of the assignment or other work.



2. Easy to get confused
Some students will get lost about course activities and deadlines.


3. Internet connections
Slow Internet connections or older computers may make accessing course materials frustrating
Managing computer files and online learning software can sometimes seem complex for students with beginner-level computer skills

4. May create sense of isolated
During the learning process, the students may feel they are alone with only their computer. This makes some of the students quite uncomfortable.

5. Unfamiliar for the lack of IT skill students
Sometimes, the managing computer files and online learning software can sometimes seem complex for students with beginner-level computer skills.

6. Required more time
The online environment is text-based. To communicate with the instructor and other students, the students must type messages, post responses, and otherwise communicate through typing. However, typing is slower than speaking. It seems learn more in an online environment, but it need to make a greater effort to accomplish that learning.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

A corporate blog is a weblog published and used by anorganization to reach its organizational goals . Corporate blogs have some unique features which is used for communication purpose for the company nowadays.

The key prerequisites for successful corporate blogs are:

- symmetric communication (incl. using comments),

- informal language,

- dialogue with readers which results in creating virtual community,

- regular postings,

- integration with other media and other content,

- clear rules and purpose of publishing (regulations).

There are several types of corporate blogs:
1) Leadership corporate blogs―in which particular person from company is thoroughly chosen for presenting company’s views on various aspects.

2) Group corporate blogs―in which all employees have right to participate in the development of company’s blog.

3) Corporate blogs platform - consist of many blogs written by employees or company’s business partners.

4) Promotional blogs – such as sponsored blogs, advertising and contest blogs

Benefits of corporate blog establishment:

~Enable the customers or potential customers to find the latest and most accurate information about its new products and services.

~For interacting with existing and potential clients.

~Goals or Missions are to increase company credibility, enhance customer service and interaction, showcase new products or services and more.

~Allowed company to closely track where and under what condition its products or services are being discussed online.

References:

http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/186126/blogging/corporate_blogging_dos_and_donts.html

Causes and Prevention: Credit Card Debt

• What is credit card debt?
  It’s happened when a credit card user bought items or services by using card system. Debt accumulated by adding some interest rate and penalties when the credit card user did not pay the credit card company for the money that he or she spent.
  
  
  Causes of credit cards debt
  
• Promotion: Every month, the credit card company will make promotion event to attract more people to subscript a new card. The most popular incentive is zero interest rate. Most of this incentive is only for the first month subscription. Once the special rate end, the interest rates shoot up. So, this made a small debt grow rapidly and becomes a huge debt.
  
• Spending: BIG SALES, MEGA SALES, STOCK CLEARING and DISCOUNT are common phrases that attract people to spend more. Although the consumer is not affordable to buy the product, the consumer will just can’t miss the promotion. At the end, they will just swap the card and buy that product.
• Missing payment: Most of the consumer did not plan their money usage. Firstly, they will use their cash to buy items. When they run out of cash, they will use their card without thinking are they able to pay? At the end of the month, the bills arrived at their home. They will have no more cash to pay it. They will just let debt accumulated and pay it next month PLUS some interest and penalties.
  

Prevention of credit card debt

• Only use cash to buy items or services. Stop spending when you are run out of cash.
• Budget your expenditure. List down all the necessary that you want to buy.
• Think before you buy. Buy it if you are able to pay the bill.
• Only use credit card for emergency.
• Clear all the outstanding debt and cancel the card that you are no longer use.
• Hold only one card. This can reduce risk card being stole.
  
  

Mobile payments systems in Malaysia: Its potentials and consumers' adoption strategies

There is a new and rapidly-adopting alternative payment method, which called mobile payment. With this method, a consumer can use a mobile phone to pay their payment without paying with cash, check or credit cards. Furthermore mobile payment also called as M-payment. Mobile Payment is paying for goods, services or makes transaction with a mobile device such as mobile phone, Smartphone, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), or other such device.

Potentials
In Malaysia, the mobile payment system has been launched since November 2001. Thus, by using the M-payment, it can eliminate the hassle to queue up for the bills payments, pay the payments when urgently or lack of other payment instruments, support refund and reversal functions, and no minimum monthly transaction like credit cards and no merchant account required. Because of nowadays there are many mobile users in Malaysia; it will be an advantage for the system to be used.

Consumers’ adoption strategies
To promote the mobile payment system to the public, the system itself should be easy to be used. Make sure there is no too complicated function which can make the users confused. In order to maintain customer loyalty, the systems also need to have powerful security to secure the customer transaction information and give confidence to them.

The mobile payment system has provided convenient to public. Therefore, with the mobile payments system, the mobile users can save their time and costs when they want to pay their payments.

The Application of pre-paid cash for consumers

An example of successful and well known application of pre-paid card in the world is the Octopus card- 八达通. The octopus card is applicable in Hong Kong. It is a card to be used in all of the public transport in Hong Kong. Besides that, It also can be used at the convenience stores, supermarkets, car parks and other places. The card made their life easier and more convenient.

Touch 'n Go in Malaysia is improving ! As we know, the card can be used to pass tolls and to be used in railway transports. Besides that, selected parking sites such as Sunway Pyramid and The Mines enable us to use Touch'n Go too. So, what is Touch'n Go?

Touch'n Go is a card that uses contactless smartcard technology. Users able to use it as long as it is pre-loaded with electronic cash. There are few places to reload the card which includes toll plazas, train stations, ATMs, Cash Deposit Machines with zero charges and Petrol kiosks , authorised third party outlets with RM0.50 charging fees.

Touch'n Go could be used in RapidKL too. It is a good news to people who takes public bus because it can be used as Monthly Travel Card. Besides that, under a pilot scheme of the Touch'n Go card, Outlets such as A&W, Burger King, Dunkin’ Donut, 7-Eleven, Carrefour hypermarkets, Caltex convenience stores and Cineleisure in Klang Valley areas are accepting the card too.

Pre-paid Cash Card is a card that will not have to bare a "rolling debts" such as misuse of credit cards. Besides, you can use what you have NOW without using your FUTURE money.

Money is more valuable now than future.

Electronic Currency

E-currency, which allows Internet-based purchase and sales transactions involving almost anything to be safely conducted at lightning speed.

Electronic Currency is also known as electronic money, electronic cash, digital money, digital cash or digital currency. The examples of electronic currency are Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and direct deposit.

Electronic currency means the money you use over the internet. Electronic currency trading means buying and selling of this internet money, allows its holder to buy the goods and the services that offered over the internet.


There are some of the electronic currency trading experts has stronglly suggested that beginners should start with only a few dollars so that they can first learn about electronic currency.

With electronic currency trading you are given many opportunities to make profit without spending too much on investment.

Besides that, electronic currency trading has a low transaction cost as compare with other businesses. So that, electronic currency trading allows you to do business with minimal fees but giving you more profit for you.

Electronic currency trading is versatility and convenience to the persons involved. Electronic currency trading market that best suit for your needs for anytime of day. The electronic currency trading business does not sleep at the night or day, the world is merely at your fingertips.

Aside from the schedule flexibility, whether you are at home, at the coffee shop or virtually anywhere, electronic currency trading can be used as long as there is an internet connection.

Electronic currency trading is not only very profitable it is also very convenient for you.

The review on post on Internet Security from My E-Commerce blog

From My E-Commerce blog post, I actually know what the common password those account users are using. Internet security is very important to safeguard our private information which located in some place like online banking website, email, company intranet and so on.

I experienced before that my email have been hacked.
Many of my friends actually experienced before. When we are offline, the hacker will use our account to spread viruses to other user stated that this website is exciting and good. Once the other user press on the website, the same thing will happen to them too.

How to choose a safe password?

There are few steps to choose a safe password.

1. Think some thing that other people don’t know such as when you bought your car.

2. When creating your password, put one or two letter in the middle of your password.Spacing and capitalization can make the password more secure.
For example: 123 kFc 659

3. Once you satisfied with the password, you will not easily forget it. To ensure you remember the password, make few of your other account like Facebook, Friendster and MSN Hotmail to have a same password.

4. Do not write down your password anywhere that is visibly by anyone.

Warning: Numerical like mobile phone number and birthday taken as password can be easily can be guess by third party. Password that is too long are easily being forgotton. So, choose your password carefully and wisely.

Phishing: Examples and its prevention methods

What is Phishing??? Whether the word come from "Fishing"???

"Phishing = fishing + phreaking"

Phishing is a new type of network attack where the attacker creates a replica of an existing Web page to fool users (e.g., by using specially designed e-mails or instant messages) in order to attract user's attention to update and submit their personal secret information such as financial status, password data and so on to their service provides’ Web site.

The word ‘Phishing’ is initially emerged in 1990s. The earlyhackers have used ‘ph’ to replace ‘f’ to produce a new words in the hacker’s community. Phishing is a new word produced from ‘fishing’, it refers to the act that the attacker attract users to visit a faked website by sending them faked e-mails or instant messages, and steal the victim’s personal information such as user name,password, and national security ID, and etc.

They usually will attract users to visit their website to conform or modify your account number and password through the hyperlink provided in the e-mail.

Then, you will be linked to a faked website after clicking those links. The style, the functions performed, sometimes even the URL of these faked websites are similar to the real website. It is very difficult for you to know that you are actually visiting a faked website. If you insert the account number and password, the attackers then will successfully collect the information at the server side. This will enable them to access into user account and perform the next ation with those information.

Methods To Prevent Phishing Attack (such as Maybank and Public Bank cases mentioned above)

1) Never disclose any private information via internet even if you have received those emails from the bank.

2) Never respond to any phone call/ sms requesting your bank account details.

3) Never disclose your bank account details or Internet banking username and password to anyone

4) NEVER follow instructions from unknown parties to do banking transactions or make changes to your bank account details

In conclusion, users should take those methods to prevent phishing attack. It is because "PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURING"

Police alert!
Don't be a victim of phishing scams! Protect yourself from identity theft today..........

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

Nowadays, new generations are depending on the technology. Private photos and information are all save in their own computers. It makes life easy but also make them more risky. Their data could be stolen easily!

Cases such as Phishing e-mail targets local Internet banking users, Edison Chen Photo Scandal, Company Laptop been Stolen and School Employees' Personal Data Stolen. These cases reflects that data could be stolen by different ways such as data theft, phishing and laptop stolen.

There are types of threats and attacks that are harmful to our data.

1. Nontechnical attack -- phishing.

Details are available in http://t8g3.blogspot.com/2009/06/phishing-examples-and-its-prevention.html which posted by Kok Yong.

2. Technical attacks-- DoS attack, DDoS attack, Virus, Worm, Macro virus or macro worm and Trojan horse.

Denial-of-service attack

An attacker uses specialized software to send a flood of data packets to the target computer with the aim of overloading its resources. It may cuase a network to shut down, making it impossibke for users to access the site.

Virus

A piece of software code that insert itself into a host, including the operating systems, to propagate, it requires that its host program to be run to activate it.

Trojan Horse

A program that appears to have a useful function but taht contains a hidden function that presents a secuirty risk.

Beware of these threats and attacks as they are harmful to your data!

How to safeguard our personal and financial data

Nowadays, the Internet users are facing the problems that their personal and financial data has been stolen. There are many hackers would gain control of our data. Besides that, when surfing the Internet, there are some website which has virus. However, there may have some safeguards which can prevent their important data from being stolen.

By using the user name and password, which is the most common ways that people use to protect their data. Nevertheless, the password used must be longer because it provides greater security than the shorter one. Not only that, we also should change our password frequently in order to avoid others stolen our password.

To protect against some virus that are very harmful to our computer, we have to install the powerful antivirus software which can be bought from the shop. We also can download the antivirus software from the Internet which is free of charge. Usually the antivirus software has the automatic update feature which provides the better protection from the new virus that popping up from the Internet.

The antispyware and firewall are both safeguard which are very important for us to protect our data. The antispyware can prevent the unauthorised users access into our personal date in our computer. Besides that, the firewall can prevent the hackers from hacking our data.

So, these are some of the safeguard that can protect our data from being misusing.

The history and evolution of e-commerce

One of the most popular activities on the net is shopping. You can shop through web anytime and anywhere no matter you are wearing pajamas. E-commerce is a selling and buying process that done electronically through technology. Generally, e-commerce can be done with electricity, cable, computer, modem and the internet. E-commerce was started to be use in 1991 when the web are open for commercial use. From that time, thousand of businesses are started in the web and many of the people gain profit through this e-commerce.

At first, e-commerce was developed with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) which were introduced in late 1970s. These two applications enable user to send or receive business document like purchasing order, sale invoice and so on. With the rapid growth of e-commerce, credit card, automated teller machine (ATM), telephone banking, airline reservation system were introduced in 1980-1990. Online shopping was introduced by Micheal Aldrich in 1979. However, this was widely used transport manufacturers such as Ford, Peugeot-Talbot, General Motors and Nissan.

• 
  1990: Tim Berners-Lee writes the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, using a NeXT computer.

• 1991: commercial enterprise on the Internet was strictly prohibited. Although the Internet became popular worldwide around 1994, it took about five years to introduce security protocols and DSL allowing continual connection to the Internet.
  
  
• 1992: J.H. Snider and Terra Ziporyn publish Future Shop: How New Technologies Will Change the Way We Shop and What We Buy. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312063598.
  


• 1994: Netscape releases the Navigator browser in October under the code name Mozilla. Pizza Hut offers pizza ordering on its Web page. The first online bank opens. Attempts to offer flower delivery and magazine subscriptions online. Adult materials also becomes commercially available, as well as cars and bikes. Netscape 1.0 is introduced in late 1994 SSL encryption that made transactions secure.
  



• 1995: Jeff Bezos launches Amazon.com and the first commercial-free 24 hour, internet-only radio stations, Radio HK and NetRadio start broadcasting. Dell and Cisco begin to aggressively use Internet for commercial transactions. eBay is founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb.
  




• 1998: Electronic postal stamps can be purchased and downloaded for printing from the Web.
  
  
• 1999: Business.com sold for US $7.5 million to eCompanies, which was purchased in 1997 for US $149,000. The peer-to-peer filesharing software Napster launches. ATG Stores launches to sell decorative items for the home online.
  
  
• 2000: The dot-com bust. A lot of European and American business companies offered their services through the World Wide Web. Since then people began to associate a word "ecommerce" with the ability of purchasing various goods through the Internet using secure protocols and electronic payment services.
  


• 2002: eBay acquires PayPal for $1.5 billion. Niche retail companies CSN Stores and NetShops are founded with the concept of selling products through several targeted domains, rather than a central portal.
  
  


• 2003: Amazon.com posts first yearly profit.



• 2007: Business.com acquired by R.H. Donnelley for $345 million.
  


• 2008: US eCommerce and Online Retail sales projected to reach $204 billion, an increase of 17 percent over 2007.