Corporate Blogging

Nowadays, business-like blogging is taking off. Companies are using blogs for both internal and external communications, to improve customer relations and improve business processes

The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads.

Corporate bloggers from leading firms including IBM and Microsoft found that “Listening to customers and acting on their suggestions is one of the best ways to build a group of customers and blogs are an excellent method of being able to listen to customers.

Although there are many different types of corporate blogs, most can be categorized as either external or internal.

External blogs -- publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokepersons share their views. Companies use external blogs for public relations and marketing and demonstration of thought leadership. The expected benefits of external blogs include improved brand recognition and external communications, as well as a vehicle for customer feedback.

Internal Blogs -- generally accessed through the corporation's Intranet, is a weblog that any employee can view. The informal nature of blogs may encourage, employee participation, free discussion of issues, collective intelligence, direct communication between various layers of an organization, and a sense of community. It is mainly used as a tool for sharing knowledge and increase employees’ contribution.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_blog

Sun Microsystems CEO, Jonathan Schwartz said blogging doesn’t just communicate with the marketplace, though Sun’s CEO also uses his company blog to communicate with the more than 32,000 Sun employees. When they have questions about business decisions, Jonathan can respond to both the company and the marketplace via his blog. He also discusses new products online. His blog attracts approximately 60,000 readers per day.

These are some useful links on corporate blogging:

1.http://www.globalprblogweek.com/archives/how_to_launch_a_corp.php
2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_blog

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

Electronic auctions, auctions conducted online, have been in existence for several years on local area networks and were started on the Internet in 1995. Electronic auctions serve as brokers, offering services that enable sellers to post their goods for sale and allow buyers to bid on those items.

There are several types of e- auction fraud conducted over the internet, which are failures to ship merchandise, improper grading techniques, fraud photo and misleading description. Fraud may be conducted by sellers and buyers. Therefore, in order to protect the buyers and sellers in the e-auction, there are several measures in an effort to reduce fraud.

◗ Verification - used 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.

◗ Authentication service - Product authentication is a way of determining whether an item is genuine and described appropriately.

◗ Feedback Forum - Its 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.

◗ Escrow services -With an easy-to-access link to a third-party escrow service, both partners in a deal are protected. The buyer mails the payment to the escrow service, which verifies the payment and alerts the seller when everything checks out. At that point, the seller ships the goods to the buyer. After an agreed-upon inspection period, the buyer notifies the service, which then sends a check to the seller.

◗ Grading services – determining the physical condition of an item, such as “poor quality” or “mint condition”. The actual grading system depends on the type of item being graded. Different items have different grading systems.

E-Government

E-government: The use of information technology and e-commerce to provide access to government information and delivery of public services to citizens and business partners.

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

There are four types of e-government services which consist of Government-to-Citizen (G2C), Government-to-business (G2B), Government-to-Employee (G2E), and Government-to-Government (G2G).

IMPLEMENTATION STATUS OF E-GOVERNMENT PROJECT IN MALAYSIA

Generic Office Environment (GOE) – the aim of GOE is to introduce a fully integrated, distributed and scalable office environment that leverages use of multimedia information technology.

Electronic Procurement (eP) Project – the aim is to re-engineer, automate and transform current procurement system.

Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS) – it provide single interface for government employees to perform human resource functions effectively and efficiently.

Project Monitoring System (PMS) – it create a mechanism to monitor project implementation throughout various government agencies and statutory bodies.

Electronic Services Directory (eServices) – it is a pilot project that allows citizens to engage in transactions with government and utilities payments.

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

E-Syariah – to improve the quality of service in Syariah.

Other Applications – online tax

CITIZENS ADOPTION

The public sector is facing with three categories of challenges in adopting eGovernment

Operation

- Government reform
- Improve efficiency and effectiveness
- Adoption of technology
- Automating government
- Readiness of the citizens
- Infrastructure development
- Accessibility
- Digital divide

Policy Making

- Policy changes
- Responsible body
- National vs State
- Security
- Transparency
- Privacy

Regulatory

- To keep up with technology
- To standardize regulatory framework

Article from ecommerze.blogspot .com

Another sms scam

After the recent SMS scam attack on Digi subscribers, now is the turn for Maxis subscribers to experience the similar SMS scam.Subscribers will be informed through SMSes that they had won some cash worth a few thousands from Maxis. In order to withdraw the money, they were required to call a foreign 15 digits phone number to provide then with the bank account number.A Maxis spokeperson beside denying their involvement, also reminded the subscribers to ignore SMSes with foreign or weird codes.

Source: TheStar, 14th July 2007.

Personal Opinion:Seems like the SMS scams is getting bolder and innovative. A lot of new tricks are being implemented to trick the subcribers to disclose some crucial financial and personal information. How could the government and telcos help to stop this scam from spreading on? May be they can consider the actions taken by SC in closing down the illegal fund investment websites - blocking all the weird or foreign codes? The government also should control the licenses for mobile services operators which are related to SMS.

source: http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/Legal

Blogger's comment

If you never gotten a piece of SMS scam you should consider yourself lucky. As reported by the Malaysia’s National ICT Security Emergency Response Center (NISER), the top 10 originating countries in the case of SCAM in Malaysia are:

>>USA - 59.09%, China - 5.56%, Korea - 4.46%, Canada -3.33%, Japan - 2.12%, Taiwan - 2.09%, UK - 1.66%, France - 1.60%, Germany -1.30%
>> Local - 3.15%

example of sms scam

According to Wikipedia, mobile phone scam is a form of spamming directed at the text messaging service of a mobile phone. It is described as mobile spamming, SMS scam or SpaSMS but is most frequently referred to as m-span. Most of these scam SMS are sent through the internet to your Email-to-SMS address (10-digit mobile number@carrier.com) which is virtually free of cost rather than sending it directly to your mobile number via the operator/carrier’s SMS gateway which would result in a cost to the sender.








As a mobile phone user, what action shall we take to stop unwanted SMS scam?


If you receive any unsolicited scam SMS and get billed for it, report to the Malaysian Multimedia and Communication Commission (MCMC). Of course, mobile attacks are growing worldwide, but it's hard to imagine users adopting mobile security until the problems become both widespread and unavoidable.


SMS Cpam Manager blocks the unwanted SMS messages without producing any sound or light indication. There are 6 different types of filters to block unwanted SMS. You have the freedom to choose whether to reject all incoming messages or to accept messages only from people listed in your phonebook. You can also choose to block incoming SMS messages from a defined phone number, from a defined prefix number and even messages that contain a defined phrase. With SMS Cpam Manager you can effectively filter all your incoming SMS messages. It is an effective way to stops the junk and unwanted SMS messages.



Malaysia-based mobile services operator Maxis Communications Berhad has launched a new service that enables Malaysia's largest mobile user base of 10 million customers to control, personalize and automate their short messaging services (SMS), including blocking unsolicited SMS, or Scam SMS. Even subscribing the service doesn’t mean it will totally prevent us from receiving sms spam but at least it can help to control it.

Communication through mobile devices is no longer treated as a new phenomenon. Text messaging is currently the best way to keep in touch when the environment is not conducive to talk and this the main reason why sms scam is getting more serious recently. Thus, as a mobile phone user, it is our responsibility to take corrective action to stop this unwanted phenomenon.

A review of E-Commerce website :
Florist Malaysia

Brief Profile

Florist Malaysia is a specialized store--an online florist specialising in free delivery of fresh flowers, Hand Bouquets, Flower Basket, Fruits & Flowers, Gifts & Flowers, Congratulatory Flora Stands and Cakes to most areas within Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Klang Valley and main cities in Malaysia.

Transaction Process
The design of its homepage is simple, clear, easy to read but attractive. There are catalogs on left side showing various flowers and gifts which categorized by types of products, seasons and occasions. By clicking on any categories, it then turns to another page which displays the description and price of the particular item. For the transaction using US Dollar, there is the price list in USD.

With an intend of purchase, one has 2 options:
(1) Order the item. It requires the buyer to provide details regarding order, billing, recipient, message card, and payment method.

(2) Add the item to shopping cart and continue shopping! Payment procedure is same as above.

The buyers may add some accessories to the item selected to make the item more perfect! Nonetheless, there are only 5 payment methods included credit card and bank fund transfer. This imposes limitations to the buyers and might affect the sales.

Information Provided
It provides a FAQ site to answer the queries of visitors. If they still have problems, they may contact the store as the contact details stated in the website. Information regarding store address, registration number, delivery time and venue, customer contact centre, terms and conditions and career opportunity are provided by the website.

In general...this is a simple design website with attractive products. The product prices are considered reasonable as purchase online saves a lot of effort, time, and transportation cost. However, there is room for improvement especially the design of website. It may refer to some famous websites such as Nokia.

all pic source from http://www.love.com.my/index.asp