E - CAW

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

2008-07-05T21:50:00.001+08:00

E-auction is getting more and more famous, consumer like to buy from e-auction is due to the price is lower comparing to market, easier to find the product and items they looking for by just using the search engine, and might due to more convenient and time saving.

Unfortunately, people start to misuse the e-auction. Type of fraud happens due to consumer not alert enough. The most common fraud is that buyer pay money and didn’t receive goods or seller sent the good but never receive money.

After e-auction company realize frauds are invading them, they have come up several methods to prevent frauds to bring up consumer’s confidence. A few methods that been undertaken and point out to the consumers are feedback forums, escrow service & physical inspection.

Feedback forums is actually an effective prevention where users and consumers can actually voice out the problem they facing and give a precaution to other user to take note such thing happen. For instant in Lelong.com.my, they have 1 topic on “Fraud Alert” where users report any fraud they detected to make precautions.

Escrow service, is a legal arrangement where the item is deposited into safekeeping under a trust party and once the condition (money paid) is met the item only will be send. In Lelong.com.my, they have their own escrow service where they call it SafeTrade.

Physical inspection normally only apply when the seller and the buyer are in the same location and it will be convenient for them to arrange for the inspection where make sure the item is in good condition.

Therefore users and consumers should always take precautions and prevent any frauds occurs on e-auction. As eldest always mention, taking precaution is better than cure, and so you should always remember it.

Further informations:

-William Hong Weei Loon-

A review on a post on Legal from My E-Commerce blog - How to lose your ID easily to fraudsters at home?

2008-07-05T07:02:00.003+08:00

I've choosen Mr.Hen's post on "how to lose your Identity Card (ID) easily to frauster at home?" for the review.

The personal identity information is very important for us. Our parents will always tell us that we must keep our ID properly. The reason we must hold our ID with care is to avoid been stolen. If it is stolen there's a possibility that the person who steal it will use our ID to do illegal activity and it will create a lot of trouble for us. Therefore, in order to avoid all these things to happened, i will hold my ID with me whenever and wherever i go.

When I take part in any activities which needed my photo stated ID or passport such as applying to purchase insurance, applying to open bank account, applying for credit cards. I will always write a “sample” word on it to avoid other people from duplicating my ID and sell it for the foreigner or even terrorist. Even though if there is any documents which is already useless, try to destroy it. I believe that this could help us to avoid our personal information being used by others to register on something that may cause harm to us.

If you do not want your own personal data being use by fraudsters, you must always keep in mind that ID is the most important thing to let other identify who you are and must keep your ID properly with you all the time. Lastly, do remember that not to simply give out your personal information to others, it will cause alot of problems and harms to you.

Please take good care with your own propety at all time.

- Alvin Poon Chee Hau -

Mudah.com.my

2008-07-04T16:16:00.001+08:00

A NEW BORN BABY of ecommerce in

Malaysia

. Everyone, or at least most of you guys know about eBay , and also lelong.com.my. Recently a new trading website has been implemented. Mudah.com.my is similar to eBay and also lelong.com.my. Is a place online market place where you can find different types of products and items which can be new or used items. Some of the user post new products that they want to introduce into the market and some of them post some used items that they do not want anymore.

From the website, you will able to find a lot of products that been categories into:

I) Vehicles

II) Properties

III) Electronics

IV) Home and personal items

V) Leisure/Sports/Hobbies

VI) Business to business

VII) Jobs and services

VIII) Others

Mudah.com.my downloading speed is amazing where you can actually load it in just a second every page on hour typical steamyx with 1mbps. As for any readers that never try such website before, let me guide you so that you won’t feel lost using it and get frustrated.

1) Link to this website – http://www.mudah.com.my/

2)This website will be showing in your screen.

3)Click which location you want to look your item for. Let’s say Kuala Lumpur, just press on it and it will lead to the next screen.

4) Type in the item you wan to look for in the searching bar. Let’s say you want to look for Sony products, type in Sony in the searching bar like what I do in the picture below and press search.

5) All the Sony product will be listed out as below.

6) You can also scope down the searching by category as below and also by places.

You can also advertise your items as well by click the Insert Ad in the top column. Fill in the forms and insert the item’s information and post it and it will be activate within 24 hours. The best part is that every advertisement you make is FREE!!! Yes, you hear me, it’s FREE!! However, beware of any frauds during any purchase or selling.

The layout of this ecommerce website is simple and comfortable. However, this design and layout of the website is not very attractive as in it looks very dull. It might caused by the color and logo is not attractive enough. However in overall it is good enough for a new build ecommerce website.

So, don’t miss out a big chance posting anything you wish to sell or look for something you want to buy.

To know further about it:
1) Mudah.com.my
2) Jacky Yong
3) SHVoong
4) JamieLiew

-William Hong Weei Loon-

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies.

2008-07-03T17:46:00.003+08:00

Corporate blogging is increasingly used by companies to improve both internal and external communications, as well as for sheer promotional reasons.It is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. However, unlike a press release, advertisement in a magazine or a listing in the Yellow Pages, corporate blogs are two-way communications. Corporate blogging can benefit the organization such as:

· Position your business as a thought leader

One of the most effective marketing strategies is “Show, don’t tell”. It is a strategy by demonstrating your expertise and experience in your industry through commentary, guides, analysis, etc. The quality of your blog content reflects the quality of your organisation.

· Free feedback and suggestions from key constituents

Corporate blogging gives you insights to what people comment and discuss about your products, your brand, your competitors, your marketing from the comfort of your office chair.

· Build rapport with customers

Publishing a corporate blog give your customers a channel to interact and get to know your brand and organisation in a form that they’re familiar and comfortable with.

· Lead generation

Having your blog appear on the first page of Google’s results gives your organisation credibility in the eyes of your potential customers. Make sure that your contact details are easily accessible and you’ll be getting leads from your blog in no time.

· Increased website traffic from higher search engine rankings

Because blogs are so easy to publish, you’ll find yourself adding new content to your websites more frequently. Search engines favour websites with fresh content and ranks your blog higher in search results, which in turn results in a greater number of referrals from search engines to your website and blog.

However, not everyone is in favour of enterprise blogging and it is a risky strategy. The drawbacks of blogging in enterprises are illustrate below:

There is a risk that an ill-judged comment could be seized upon by the media or disgruntled investors.
It can be tricky to drag public comment out of a company without first routing through the sanitizing filter of a press office.
The best non-corporate blogs are spontaneous and genuine. Poorly written corporate blogs can look fake - or perhaps worse, they reveal incompetence.
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 ofoffice rival is not really wise. a single good idea. Sharing it all on a weblog, with competitors or (worse) an office rival is not really wise.

These are the 15 Most Popular Corporate Blogs:

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

These are a few useful resources on corporate blogging available from the Internet:

- Carmen Lee Jia Wen -

Review of Using Touch n Go to buy Fast Food In Malaysia

2008-06-28T10:58:00.002+08:00

I never knew that Touch n Go have such an amazing plan where consumer actually can use the card as a payment for certain fast food retail shop. According to TheStar newspaper, state that consumer can use start using such service starting from 19^th April 2008. The outlets that adopt such system are A&W, Burger King, Dunkin Donut, 7-Eleven, Carrefour Hypermarket, Caltex convenience store and also Cineleisure. I used to hope Touch n Go can provide service and now it had came true.

The most attractive point of this new service is that no extra charges are is required. For instant if your A&W cost you RM 6.80, and then it will be only RM6.80 deducted from your card. So in the coming days we can see people using Touch n Go for all the purchases. Parents can also use this as a daily expenses card for their children instead of giving the children cash.

However there are some limitation that I feel unsafe using such service. As we know Touch n Go is used by just touching the card to the paying machine and it’ll be direct deducted. So what if we lost our card? Even though the manage mention that they will block the card immediately, but then the card is so convenient where you can actually used up all the money by 1 goal and of course without identification where else credit cards and debit cards have identity verification.

How ever whether this new service is a good or bad thing is all depend on the consumer, some thing that losing a card might be just a small lost and the main concern is the convenient where some think oppositely.

Let me know what you think by replying after reading.

Further Information:

<-Promos for buying Touch ’n Go

<-You can use Touch n Go card to buy burgers by next Saturday

<-Touch n Go Website

<-Reviewed Post

+William Hong Weei Loon+ “Predict the unpredicted"

The application of prepaid cash card for consumers

2008-06-27T00:00:00.004+08:00

The pre-paid cash card represent money and is similar to a stored-value card. A pre-paid cash card is just a plastic card which provides an alternative payment method for purchasing goods. Its function is just like ATM card, it's withdraw direct from either bank account or remaining balance on the card. The card also can use on the internet. Nowadays, pre-paid cash card has become wide-spread in many countries and it is taking over the cheque and some instances cash transactions by volume. The value associated with the card can be accessed using a magnetic stripe embedded in the card, on which the card number is encoded; using radio-frequency identification; or by entering a code number, printed on the card, into a telephone or other numeric keypad.

Pre-paid cash card have typical application, there is closed system card, semi closed system cards, open system purchasing cards and open system cards.

“Closed system cards”
The cards for replaced the traditional "gift certificate" and are commonly known as "gift cards". Purchasers buy a card for a fixed amount and can only use the card at the merchant that issues the card.

"Semi-closed system cards"
Cardholders are permitted to redeem the cards at multiple merchants within a geographic area. These types of cards are issued by a third party, rather than the retailer who accepts the card.

"Open System Purchasing Cards"
Cards is not really a credit card, although they are often marketed as "prepaid credit cards", as no credit is offered by the card issuer: the card-holder spends money which has been "stored" on the card via his own prior deposit.

"Open system prepaid cards"
There are the most regulated of all the stored value cards. An example is the Payroll card. Payroll cards are used by employers to pay employees. The employee is issued a card that permits access to an account established by the employer.

- ALVIN POON CHEE HAU -

Credit Card debts: Causes and Prevention

2008-06-26T02:05:00.001+08:00

Credits c ards are a relatively recent development. It allows consumers to purchase products or services without cash and to pay for them at a later date. To qualify for this type of credit, the consumer must open an account with a bank or company, which sponsors a card. They then receive a line of credit with a specified dollar amount. They can use the card to make purchases from participating merchants until they reach this credit limit and the user will have to settle the bill when it arrives. Credit cards are designed with complex security features to prevent the possibility of fraud. These features involve the card's account number, its signature panel, and its magnetic stripe.

Credit cards, when used properly, are convenient and a great budgeting tool. If abused, though, credit cards can be the start of a years-long nightmare and unbelievable stress. There are several reasons that cause the users to spend too much by using credit cards and we will explain along the ways to control credit card debts with the causes.

First, the user has poor money management that he/she spend without a plan which will lead the user to have no idea where the money is going. Planning is no more difficult than writing down your expenses and income and reconciling the two. You will be surprised at how powerful you'll feel when you are making thoughtful decisions about where and when to spend your money.

Secondly, majority of underemployment user may think that it is just temporary (taking a break), but they never thought of the expenses they spent through using credit cards and having to pay it at the end of the month when the bills come. Therefore, users who are underemployment should get those expenses in line with current income or quickly get a second job or a better job to start increasing your income in order to pay your debts and it is also the time to start adding in come of the previous spending.

Thridly, users save too little or probably not at all. The easiest way to avoid unwanted debt is to prepare for unexpected expenditures by saving three to six months of living expenses. With a savings cushion in place, a job layoff, illness or divorce will not cause immediate financial strain and increase debt. No one has ever regretted having a savings cushion.

Fourthly, users do not have money communication skills. It is important to communicate with your spouse or significant other to discuss about financial goals and spending styles. If you are married to a spender and you are a saver, you will want to map out a strategy for you both to get what you want. Know what credit accounts you each have and promise each other to be honest about what each other spends. Many people find out that their spouses have racked up thousands of dollars in credit card debt and they had no idea that the accounts even existed. This will lead to a divorce in a family.

Lastly, credit cards are too easy to apply nowadays. For example, UOB VOX Card. They have plenty of rewards and benefits such as no annual fees on supplementary cards, get cash rebates, exclusive invites for movies and much more which attracts people to apply it. Issuers of credit cards make it easy for you, if you have had no debt problems in the past. If they seem to take it lightly, it is understandable that their customers do too. But remember, they take the risk factors into account when setting interest rates. That’s why they are so high. Therefore, we must consider and communicate with our family members to have a financial plan before applying credit cards.

Resisting the pressures of the credit card society will be a lot easier once you have set your mind to it, and started to feel the benefits. Enjoy the process, and you will be a cash convert for the rest of your wealthy life.

- Carmen Lee Jia Wen -

Electronic Currency

2008-06-24T19:23:00.000+08:00

What is Electronic Currency?

It is known as e-money, electronic cash, electronic currency, 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.

With the modern technology, people now tend to do electronic currency system. The main focuses of digital cash development are being able to use it through a wider range of hardware such as secured credit cards and linked bank accounts that would generally be used over an internet means, for exchange with a secure micropayment system such as in large corporations (PayPal). Besides that, this system enables users to perform transaction in a more confidential and privacy way. One of the most attractive features of electronic currency is that, unlike real cash, it is anonymous. That is, when the electronic currency amount is sent from a customer to a merchant, there is no way to obtain information about the customer. Thus, by using electronic currency, the bank is unable to obtain personal information about the consumer. Therefore, this adequately protects the privacy rights of the customer. Besides that, it is secure to use the system because it uses encryption. For example, the use of digital signature is almost impossible to break the code of a digital signature. Therefore, even though there is speculation about the security of the Internet, electronic currency consumers are probably more secure in their transactions than the more traditional ways of doing business.

PayLoadz is one of the websites which is an e-commerce that uses e-currency for trading which is located in the heart of New York City. Founded in 1996 as a web development company and has grown to become one of the forefront developers utilizing Macromedia development products. It is a service to sell intangible products such as software, eBooks, music, movies, digital art, manuals, articles, certificates, forms, files, and anything else that can be downloaded. It is an automated delivery service that delivers your products to your customers instantly after payment. Our system operates using PayPal's online payment system and Google Checkout.

PayLoadz do provide many benefits for the customers such as free lifetime basic account and free for first month of all premium accounts users, secure file storage on their servers, Automated delivery of your digital goods immediately after payment, Sell anywhere online: your own site, our Store, eBay and more, Affiliate Builder, a fully-functioning affiliate tracking and payment system, and Supports Downloads and CD fulfillment.

- Carmen Lee Jia Wen -

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

2008-06-23T15:32:00.000+08:00

Mobile Payment is the collection of money from a consumer via a mobile device such as their mobile phone, smart phone, personal digital assistant (PDA). The mobile payment can be used to purchase any number of digital goods and physical goods. For example digital goods are ring tones, games, wallpaper for mobile phone and the booking cinema ticket and air ticket. Usually purchase digital good are through by SMS based transaction payments or mobile web payment (WAP).

Mobile Money International Sdn Bhd is one of the example that uses mobile payment system. It was established in February 2005. The charter of Mobile Money is to provide Merchants and consumers with a convenient and secure Mobile Payment and Mobile Commerce platform. Mobile Payment platform allows everyone to pay anyone, at anytime from anywhere with just one SMS. It also allows one to receive money from anyone, from anywhere, at anytime. MM Mobile Payment system is very secure and it is a closed loop payment system.

The mobile payment system has potential to make consumer use the mobile web payment (WAP) to make payment on time. The process is quickly replacing premium SMS based transactional payments for digital content and also enables the sale of physical goods. It also has security to protect payment details and consumer identify. It operate with PIN as secure as ATM card, if you had lose your phone, you will just have to call the network operator to deactivate the line. Using the familiar mobile payment system can make high customer satisfaction from quick and predictable payment and safe of use from a familiar set of online payment pages. By adopting the MMWallet system, consumer can get alot of savings such as save up to 20% when you buy prepaid reload and save up to 0.65% when you spend at any MM Merchants.

Currently they are lots of merchants available for customers to purchase such as home essential, food, snack, fragrance, health drinks, personal care and much more.

The consumers need not spend more cost to adopt the system. They only buy one mobile phone and they can get to use the system to purchase goods and services and consumers get to compare the price of goods in market price. Thus they will become a smart consumer in the world. Besides that, the mobile commerce transaction are now very secure to perform financial transactions in electronic environment and data of personal data are confidentiality.

To know more details about MMWallet and the steps to start using MMWallet, please visit to http://www.carigold.com/portal/forums/showthread.php?threadid=15152.

-ALVIN POON CHEE HAU-

A review on a post on Internet Security from ecommerze.blogspot.com .

2008-06-21T22:13:00.005+08:00

I was going through Mr. Hen e-commerce blog and I was attached to this blog – 1 Million computers in China hit by Viruses and I start reading it.

It was surprised that China was invaded by viruses in only a week time and causes up to 1 million computers to break down and this is a very serious problem. Therefore I start doing some research what was the reason behind.

One of the reasons behind was during the National Day Holiday Week, most people in love to stay at home and serve the internet rather than go hang out on the crowded streets. Where anti-virus expert Jiangmin Co. stats that virus can be pass through by surfing the net, online shopping and even playing online games. Resulted around 118,000 computers crashed on a single day and up to 24,000 types of viruses were detected during the week.

Another reason of this tragedy is due to high unauthorized downloading of films, music and photos of celebrities. As one of the example happen in China on November 20, 2007 was viruses that replacing that appear to be copies of the film Lust, Caution by Ang Lee. Users instead of download the movie, it reflect to be bunch of viruses that invade the computer by causing blue screen to appear and even stealing passwords for website and instant messaging programs ( Infoworld.com ).

As a result, I realize taking a precaution on infection to the computer is one important thing. The lesson learn from the blog was DOWNLOAD LESS unauthorized files where most of the people do now, or otherwise be ready to take any circumstances which will be faced after download the files.

The second lesson is to choose a good anti virus and do not be lazy to update the anti-virus all the time because viruses is increasing everyday and causes your anti-virus to be outdated even in one day. Some good anti-virus software I encounter is:

-William Hong Weei Loon – “Precaution Is Better Than Cure’

How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

2008-06-20T13:59:00.003+08:00

In the pre-computer era, people would fall victim to telemarketing scams -- sending cheques or providing credit card numbers in response to fraudulent sales campaigns. This type of fraud has now migrated to the Internet. In order to protect our personal and financial data from being harm, below are the various ways to do it:

Use a secure Internet browser when you are online

Firefox is one of the secure browsers according to a number of sites that have tested. By using a more secure browser can help protect against from hijacking.

Clear your memory cache after browsing

After you browse the Web, copies of all accessed pages and images are saved on your computer's memory, the browsing record will grave implications for personal privacy. It’s better to clear the cache after you are done browsing the net. Here are the ways to clear your browser history. If the system asks to auto save your passwords, etc, click NO.

Keep your e-mail private, use encryption!

E-mail can be easily rerouted and read by unintended third parties which are not a secure medium as many believe. Currently, the exist technologies allow you to encrypt your messages in order to protect their privacy, e-mail programs such as Internet Explorer Outlook and Netscape Messenger. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is popular encryption software which is free for non-commercial use.

Make sure anti-virus and anti-spyware are installed and up-to-date

You can either buy excellent anti-virus programs like Kaspersky Anti-Virus or free programs like AVG. Either way; make sure there is some anti-virus and anti-spyware prgram installed. It is a big mistake for most people that don’t install any anti-spware and anti-virus programs. Some good anti-spyware apps are Windows Defender, SpySweeper, SpywareBlaster, AdWare, and Spybot Search and Destroy.

Avoid giving out information

Don't publicly give out any information online that could be traced back to you as an individual, such as your real name, your date of birth, your physical address, phone number, place of work or other personally identifiable information, including names of relatives.

Make sure the URL has an HTTPS instead of HTTP

Look in the address bar of this or other websites or email services. In the website’s address, type in the letter “s” after “http” – this can make your connection to the website more secure, but may not work for all websites or email services.

Reading the few safeguards above, may instill paranoia even in the most fearless web user. Remember, the use of the internet is a great way to make your life easier and can be a safe place as long as you follow some simple common sense rules. We must realize that the people in cyberspace are the same people you encounter every day in the physical reality. Even if you never use a computer, your identity can still be stolen from the paper that your throw out in your trash!

- Carmen Lee Jia Wen -

Phishing: Examples and its prevention methods.

2008-06-19T23:19:00.006+08:00

Phishing is the process of attempting to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as user names, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. It can trick people into giving up their personal information. Sometimes associated with spy ware. For example, perpetrators may get victims to click on a link that takes them to a Web site where they are subject to a drive-by download. Lalong.com and online-banking are common targets. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging and often direct users to enter details in a website. Below are the steps to prevent phishing emails and website:

1. Recognize it - If you receive an unexpected email from a bank or credit card company saying that your account will be shut down if you do not confirm your billing information, do not click on any links in the email. Phishers typically have one purpose in mind: to entice people to react immediately by clicking on the link and inputting their password or credit card number before they take time to think through what they are doing.

2. Report it - Contact your bank, if you have unwittingly supplied personal or financial information. You should also report the matter to your local police. They will often take police reports even if the crime may ultimately be investigated by another law enforcement agency.

3. Stop it - Become familiar with the practices of your financial institutions and credit card companies. They normally will not use email to confirm an existing client's information. Keep informed of the latest advisories and steps on how to protect you from identity theft and fraud.

Watch this fun yet informative video about Phishing brought by eBay Canada. Please click this small TV. Enjoy the video clip !!!

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

2008-06-17T19:14:00.002+08:00

Online have gave us a lot of convenient such as making online transactions on paying bills, online shopping, look for informations, etc. Sadly the online security had become an issue recently. As for the most famous threat is Trojan attack, Daniel G. James analyzes that the Trojan attack had been increase, from 2004 till 2006.

Trojan Infections from 2004 - mid of 2006

Statistical Analysis of Internet Security Threats by Daniel G. James

Online Threats is separated to 2 categories which are technical attacks and non technical attacks. Technical attack basically is the need of knowledge to create certain software or program to form a threat. Whereby non technical attacks is using tricks to make users to disclose certain information the attacker wants.

Virus, Trojan horse, worm, Macro Virus are all technical attacks. During May 2000, there was 1 famous worm which named “I LOVE YOU”, where a small piece of code attached to the email (Business Software Alliance) . When user opens the file, it will send an email to everyone in the address book, subsequently causes the victims’ machines to be damaged by overwrite the important files (Wikipedia). This worm started from Philippines and eventually spread within the world in 1 day time traveling across from Hong Kong towards Europe and United States.

One of the most famous non technical attack threats is Phishing. Phishing is intent to cheat a user for sensitive information by using a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Bank always been targeted in Phishing, an example of phishing email are such as below.

CitiBank

by Surf The Internet Safely

From all this threats, the attackers intent to get the private information of ours such as our user name and password for our accounts or access code and pin code for our credit cards. Therefore in order to enjoy the internet services, we users have to always take precautions on every items obtained from the internet. We must always predict the unpredictable. Our data will be safe if we take full precautions on all type of attacks from the internet.

-William Hong Weei Loon-

How E-Commerce can reduce cycle time, improve employees' empowerment and facilitate customer support

2008-06-14T17:55:00.007+08:00

With the use of E-Commerce, cycle time, employees’ empowerment and customer support can be improved.

Cycle Time is part of the operational benefits of E-Commerce which is the total time from the beginning to the end of the process of a product which includes process time, during which a unit is acted upon to bring it closer to an output, and delay time, during which a unit of work is spent waiting to take the next action. E-Commerce reduces cycle time by streamlining the acquisition process (e.g. Online shopping), utilize online auctions to obtain real-time competitive bids for selected commodities or services; suppliers benefit by seeing where they stand with their bid. E-Marketplaces reduce cycle time by bringing new suppliers “on board”.

However, Employees’ empowerment and customer support is strategy benefits of E-Commerce in an organization. Employees’ empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behaves; take action, and control work and decision making in autonomous ways. Through E-Commerce systems like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Human Resource Management System (HRMS) may provide the ability to help employees in their work. For example, using HRMS, an employer can configure payroll and benefits systems, create and manage training systems, and even track performance reviews and ERP which is a method designed to integrate several different data sources and/or processes into one single unified system which can provide better customer service and improved productivity of employees.

Customer support is a service that computer and software manufacturers, and third-party service companies that offer to customers who include mail-in service, carry-in service, on-site contract, hot lines and bulletin board system. With automated tools it is possible to interact with a customer in richer ways at virtually no cost. Some companies’ uses electronic bulletin board system which is like a forum within online services that staffed by services engineers that opens 24 hours a day to facilitate customer’s problems. Electronic bulletin boards enable you to download software to software upgrades that correct known bugs. Besides that, mail service is also part of the service that gives convenience to the customers to confirm the order or to solve a problem.

Identify and Compare the Revenue Model for Google, Amazon.com and eBay

2008-06-14T14:59:00.009+08:00

Revenue model is a model to describe the various revenue streams your business will be putting in place and how each will generate the money. We will be discussing about the comparison of revenue model for few E-Commerce websites which are Google, Amazon.com and eBay.

Google is a public and profitable company focused on search services which named for the mathematical term “googol”. It operates web sites at many international domains, with the most trafficked that recognized as "world's best search engine" because it is fast, accurate and easy to use. Google generate most of the revenue from Google AdWords which is a pay per click advertising program that designed to allow the advertisers to present their advertisement to people at the instant that the people are looking for information related to what the advertiser offer.

Amazon.com is an American electronic commerce and it is the one of the first major companies to sell goods by internet. Amazon.com uses the Distributor Model as their revenue model which it takes ownership of the products where it sells products to those who directly entered the “store” to make purchase. As a result, it realizes the total revenue it gets off the product’s sale. For example, a supplier purchases a product from Amazon.com for $2.00 and resells it for $4.00. The $2.00 is the margin before costs. Once cost is factored in, however, the gross margin can be substantially less.

eBay.com is an online auction and shopping Web site in which people and businesses buy and sell goods and services worldwide. It has established localized web sites in thirty other countries and it also owns PayPal, StubHub, Skype and other business. EBay generate most of its revenue by Seller Fees. This fee system is quite complex where there are fees on listing a product on eBay and fees when product sells plus several optional fees which all based on various factors and scales. The latest financial results shows that Skype shows an increase of 61% over last year, PayPal increased up 32% from the same period last year.

Amazon.com - An example of e-commerce success and it's causes

2008-06-14T12:14:00.013+08:00

Amazon.com is one of the world known e-commerce business and first major companies to sell goods by internet. It is launch online in year 1995, at first only online books can be found in Amazon.com which back then is called “Cadabra.com”, but soon it have diversified its business to include other products such as DVD, Music CDs, computer software, video games, furniture, toys and etc.

Amazon’s initial business plan was unusual. Amazon grew steadily in the late 90’s while other Internet companies grew blindingly fast. Due to that Amazon’s shareholders launch a lot of complains saying they aren’t earning profit fast enough. However, when the dot-com bubble (also known as I.T. bubble) burst, a lot of electronic companies went out of business but not Amazon, turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2002, U.S. $5 million. Amazon was iconic "stock in which to invest" of the late 1990s dot-com bubble. Now, Amazon is the Internet's No. 1 music, No. 1 DVD and video, and No. 1 book retailer. (Amazon.com Investor Relations)

Amazon.com seeks to be the world's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they may want to buy online. Amazon.com's All Product Search scours the Web to help customers find merchandise that is not available at Amazon.com, Amazon.com Auctions, or Amazon.com zShops, making Amazon.com the shopping destination to find anything.

Amazon.com has also invested in leading Internet retailers that are improving the lives of customers by making shopping easier and more convenient. Such as:

1) Drugstore.com - An online retail and information source for health, beauty, wellness, personal care and pharmacy.

2) Pets.com - The online leader for pet products, expert information, and services.

3) HomeGrocer.com - The first fully integrated Internet grocery-shopping and home-delivery service with operations in Seattle; Portland, Oregon; and Southern California 4)

4) Gear.com - Which offers brand-name sporting goods at prices from 20 to 90 percent off retail

5) Ashford.com - The leading Internet retailer of luxury and premium products and the Web's No. 1 retailer of watches and jewelry.

According to Maryam Mohit, Amazon.com's V.P. of Site Development, stats that the key of success is to put a strong focus on customer experience, which is infused throughout all levels of the company and includes all aspects of the buying process. Therefore the engineers of Amazon.com really strong about thinking about customer experience where invest in leading Internet retailer that been mention above, whereby there’s a strong operations team who run the back-end operations. He also says that monitoring the customer experience is one of important factor to Amazon.com’s success. (The key of success)

- William Hong Weei Loon -

An example of an E-commerce failure and its causes

2008-06-09T18:27:00.020+08:00

The example of the E-commerce failure is boo.com. The boo.com website was widely criticized as poorly designed for its target online customer, going against many User-friendly conventions. The site relied heavily on javascript and Flash technology to display 3D views of wares as well as Miss Boo, a sales-assistant-style avatar. The first publicly released version of the site was fairly hefty—the home page alone was several hundred kilobytes which meant that the vast majority of users had to wait minutes to load the web page because that that time the broadband technologies were still not widely available. The site's front page did contained the warning; "this site is designed for 56K modems and above" only can view it.

The complicated design required the site to be displayed in a fixed size window, which limited the space available to display product information to the customer. Navigation techniques changed as the customer moved around the site, which appealed to those who are visiting to view the website and causes customer frustration who simply wanted to do online shopping. The company also had decided to pay postage on returns, but even more importantly its interface was also very complex with a hierarchical system that requires the user to answer four or five different questions before revealing that the product is out of stocks in a particular sub-section. The same basic questions will have to be answered by the customer again and again until the results had been found.

-Alvin Poon Chee Hau- :P

The History and Evolution of E-Commerce

2008-06-08T01:06:00.001+08:00

Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce) is the process of buying and selling of goods and services by transferring of funds over the networks through computers by digital and business communication. It also includes all inter-company and intra-company functions such as finance, marketing, manufacturing, and selling, that enable commerce by the use of electronic mail, electronic data interchange, fax, video conferencing, file transfer, or interaction with a computer.

The history and evolution of E-Commerce is basically to determine the different phases and process of transforming information technology into business process. It also provides details about how E-Commerce began to be used as a popular mean of economic exchange which refers to online transaction of goods.

It began with the introduction of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). It is a set of standards developed in the 1960s to facilitate the interchange of vital business oriented information such as prices, inventory, and delivery with retailers making it possible to easily track trends and new products. Besides that, it enables the big business firms to indulge in a sort of beneficial electronic.

However, in the year of 1984, ASC X12 standards which also known as "ANSI X12" and "ASC X12”, is the official designation of the U.S. national standards body for the development and maintenance of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) standards. During the 1990s, the internet was opened for commercial use; it was also the period that users started to participate in World Wide Web (WWW) which also refers to Mosaic web-browser, and the phenomenon of rapid personal computer (PC) 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. Mosaic web-browser was the first point and click browser that could be downloaded and was name “Netscape” which allowed quicker access to E-Commerce. In the year of 1998, the development of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) expanded in California, USA. DSL allowed quicker access and a persistent connection to the Internet. December 1998 was another major step in development of E-Commerce; “The Big Online Holiday Extravaganza” had generated over $1 billion for Amazon and AOL in within 10 weeks. Red Hat Linux is the next major step of E-Commerce history which occurred on August, 1999. Linux gave users another choice in a platform other then Windows that was reliable and open-source.

In August 1999, Napster had been an online application for music lovers to share music files for free. There was a major merger in early year 2000, between AOL and Time Warner which worth approximately of $350million that brought both together a major online company and a traditional company. In the same year on February, the hackers use Denial-of-Service Attack (DoS) to attack in some E-Commerce biggest giants including Yahoo, ebay and Amazon.com.

Well, the worldwide popularity of Internet has resulted in the stable development and overwhelming acceptance of E-Commerce and provides with a rich online transaction experience. It has revolutionized further and has been converted into E-Business with the optimum usage of resources such as the internet, credit card, E-Commerce software or shopping carts solutions. Loads of companies are shifting to E-Commerce and E-Business solutions because of easy availability of clients; provide better and faster approach towards the market. These modern techniques provide new and healthy business without much needed investment. E-Business has been termed to be the fastest growing industry in this modern era of computers and finance. E-Business has proved to be the most effective way for marketing products worldwide by just a click of a button with the help of several E-Commerce’s software.

Here are some websites that you can refer to that explains more detail on the history and evolution of E-Commerce :

- Carmen Lee Jia Wen -

About Alvin Poon Chee Hau

2008-06-02T22:49:00.000+08:00

My name is Alvin Poon Chee Hau. Usually my friends will call me “ALVIN”, but in my family they call me “AH BIN” in HAkka language(I also don't know why).I come from Sandakan, Sabah. My lovely family consists of four members which is my father, mummy, sister and me. I am the youngest child in my family. My age now is 23 years old and my date of birthday is 24th of May.

My hobby is collecting stamps from different places in Malaysia and even from different countries. This is because my grandfather had influences me since i was very young. Therefore, i am now taking over his place to continue to add on his previous stamps book. So far now I have 3 stamp books which included 128 “first day cover” stamps and local stamps in two of the albums and i have a full album of foreign stamps. i had now stop collecting stamps due to my studies.

After graduating my Diploma in Tunku Abdul Rahman College at Sabah branch (TARC) in year 2008, i have now further my studies at University Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) which is located at Sg.Long, Selangor. This is the first time that i have to leave my hometown from such a long distance to stay permanently at Sg.Long for 2 years until i finished my studies. When i miss my home sweet home i will fly back to my hometown occasionally.

Hotmail is the most important thing when it comes to going online. I will log in to hotmail at least twice a day to check out those funny and interesting things that my friends had sent me and sometimes i even received special promotions from certain entertainment such as discounts from Green Box, free tickets from Golden Screen Cinema and promotions on hotels. It also provide communication system like MSN for me to communicate with my friends easily. I can discuss about assignments with my friends through video conferencing or microphones. There is one more internet social network service that i use which is Friendster. It is more convenient for me to contact my friends, make new friends from all around the world and recontact my old long lost friends. Any old friends of mine read this blog, please do contact me at ponghauno1@hotmail.com. Sometimes, i love checking out my friends photos to see how's their life now and to update myself about them through blogs.

Assignments is the biggest headache of all. When i couldn't find any solution for my assignments of studies, i will log in to Ask.com to search for the information that i needed. If i can't get the answers, i will post up my question to the public for help. Sometimes when i get over frustrated on doing assignments, Youtube will be the saver of the day. It entertainments me with funny, hilarious and creative clips when i was bored or out of idea for my assignments. Besides that i do download movies and songs to kill my leisure time. Everyday I will not miss out the daily e-newspaper that is thestar.com.my and sun2suft.com that provide me the latest news locally and around the world.

- Alvin Poon Chee Hau -

Thanks for viewing our blog.

About William Hong Weei Loon

2008-06-01T15:52:00.000+08:00

Welcome aboard, I'm Hong Weei Loon, or you can call me William, however not William Hong please, because I feel ashame for not being a good singer as the most famous singer in the world who makes millions of dollar in his first album, Mr. William Hung, the most famous candidate in America Idols.

Born in 9th of January 1987, and that makes me 21 years old this year. Is a year that reminds me of taking more heavy responsibilities and duty as a son and to the society. I'm the youngest among my siblings and for your information I've only one brother, Victor Hong, who works in Car Audio Marketing. He is good in setting up car audio system, if you interested in making some wohoo to your precious car, let me know and you never know that you might get a worth and good audio system into you car and make everyone around you admire what you have.

I love basketball, it's my life, he's my best friend since I'm 7 years old. I still can remember my first basketball that my mom gave me has a KFC logo on it. Since that day he is part of my life up till now. Other than basketball, computer is now part of my life too. Without my computer, I will feel the world is cracking apart as if without him the world is no longer meaningful. I use my computer to go surfing the internet, keep in touch with my friends, play exciting computer games, do flash and now start learning on editing pictures by using Adobe Photoshop C3 ( A famous software for pictures editing ).

Among all the websites, I love going to zerotohundred, is a Malaysia website that consist of all things about cars and even a online market forum for cars and accessories. I could spend 1 hour surfing in the website. Following by Malaysia most famous social networking website, Friendster, and also the recent booming social networking website which is Facebook, you can look for me by inserting this email address : shenzoku@yahoo.com . Is welcome to add me as well but just to let you know I don't add strangers easily, so let me at least know who are you before adding me alright? Thank you. Wikipedia, the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet which you can find any information you would want to know from this website, reading random article everyday is a interesting thing to do each day of life. When I talk about websites, I will never forget Onemanga, an online manga database, is free of charge and consist a lot of manga (or we call it comic) which been translated into English and it will be update with new episode every once a week. Recently I'm very into Politics blogs as well where it is able to get from Malaysia Kini, is fun to read what's happening around.

When talks about internet, I usually go for surfing, looking for interesting articles such as Paranormal Animals ( unusual phenomena animals for instant Big Foot in Malaysia ). I also love going online for chatting in MSN and Skype, keeping touch with my old friends and sometimes even discuss assignment in MSN. Other than surfing and chatting, going for online auction and online shopping is one of the activity I do when I go online, most of the time I'll go to Lelong.com to shop around see whether is there anything interesting and special worth buying, sometimes I even sell things in Lelong.com. Watching clips is also one of the major activity I do when connect into internet. Website such as Youtube and Metacafe is 2 interesting streaming clip website. Look for some interesting clips to watch. Lastly I also use it to check my Friendster, Facebook and Emails to determine and mails for me from my friends.

Once again, welcome to our Blog, E-Caw

- William Hong Weei Loon -

About Carmen Lee Jia Wen

2008-06-01T12:00:00.000+08:00

My name is Lee Jia Wen, but my friends usually call me Carmen because my Cantonese name is “Ka Man” and there was once, one of my teacher called my “kereta lelaki” because once my name pronounce separately it will be “Car – Men”.

I’m the one and only daughter at home and living with my lovely parents at Cuepacs (Venice Hill Condo), Cheras. My age is now 20 which I’m glad because I’m consider quite young among my classmates because my birthday falls at end of the year which is on Nov 14^th.(friends remember my pressie ; >) Previously I studied at Tunku Abdul Rahman College (TARC). After obtaining my Diploma in TARC, I’ve planned to study in University Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) to precede my degree which is what I’m doing now in accounting course, Year 3 Semester 1.

Currently, I’m working as a part time music teacher. I teach one of the Chinese musical instrument which name as “zither” a.k.a “gu zheng”. Whoever interested to learn please leave me a mail at carmen_ljw@hotmail.com.

I love reading story books especially chic lit which can be consider as fiction as well, but I like thriller and horror too. My favorite author is Sophie Kinsella and the books publish by ‘Little Black Dress’ is really good. Besides that, I love to watch movies and I love food. For my opinion, I agree the statement of ‘we live to eat’. So if any friends out there finding partner to ‘cari makan’ remember me. My favorite movie is ‘The Wedding Planner’ and ‘The Holidays’. My major hobby is shopping but I do window shopping cause due to limited financial.

The first thing I log on to my computer, I will for sure log in to this particular 3 websites first which are Hotmail , Facebook and Friendster to check my mails, check out and get updated by my friends and even contact them through messenger service or skype. Sometimes I will do video conferencing to communicate with them or discuss about assignments. I found it very convenient to do discussion by just communicating through the microphone instead of typing. I will also visit some of the newspaper's website to check out what’s going on around the world at The Star Newspaper and New Straits Times. Besides that, I will do window shopping online occasionally by visiting some of the boutique’s to check out their latest fashion and to find out what’s nice in it at emmagem.com and Female Magazine. I will also surf the net for 2nd hand stuff which is now very trendy in the market at Lelong.com

- Carmen Lee Jia Wen -