Review a local e-commerce site: Lelong.com.my

E-commerce consists of the buying and selling of the product and services over electronic systems like Internet. The local E-commerce site that my group chooses is Lelong.com.my which is the well known local e-commerce site in Malaysia.

The history of Lelong.com.my is it founded by the History Interbase Resource S/B in the end of 1998. Lelong.com.my is the pioneer of e-auction in Malaysia and with their mission statement of “Serving the community and bringing a high standard of quality into homes and businesses by providing an avenue for on-line trading at a low cost”.

The styled and functioning is similar to the international auction site such as eBay.com, however the Lelong.com.my powers a robust and secure avenue for trading in Malaysia. Lelong.com.my is provided many products and services to the public such as clothing and accessories, books and comics, watches, pens and clocks with the entire picture. And each product stated with a standard price.

Besides, Lelong.com.my also provides the search engine to easy the consumer faster to search their needs with the key words.

Furthermore, Lelong.com.my are providing a double secure and verification system, which is much more secure and better than other e-auction website. Any users which are willing to post or trade item in Lelong.com.my are required to verify their member status and telephone numbers. And the consumers can choose the different option payment such as online banking or credit card, in state it provide secure payment of verified by the visa or master card. Lelong.com.my provides two types of verification such as Handphone verification and Email verificantion in order to bid or sell, the consumer must get the request code in order to prevent them to fraud or phising.

Related links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_commerce

http://www.lelong.com.my/Auc/help/details.asp?productid=121

http://www.lelong.com.my/

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 whereas eAuction is an electronic "reverse" auction where suppliers use internet-based software to bid against each other online and in real time against a published specification.

E-auction Fraud

Bid Shielding
The practice of placing a low bid in an auction online and having a second person enter a bid that is high enough to get other bidders to drop out or not even bid. Then at the last second, the high bid is retracted and the low bid wins.

Bid Siphoning
There is occurs when seller offering to sell the same item at a lower price. They intend to trick consumers into sending money without delivering the item. Therefore, buyers lose any protections the original site may provide such as insurance , feedback forum or guarantees.

There are some tips to prevent e-auction fraud

User identify verification is a payment account information to verify the identify of a user the payment account may be a credit account before providing the user access to computer software. For example, ic number or derivers’ license. Thus, users can quality for the highest level of verification on the sites.

Authentication service means a public or private service that authenticates the identity of an online applicant for a TreasuryDirect account using information provided by the applicant.

Grading service is the third party company that grades a coin according to recognized industry standard and encapsulates the coin.

Feedback forum is a form that a reader on your site fills out and then email to you. So that buyers and sellers can build up their online trading reputations.

Escrow Service is a intermediary people to selling a product on the internet and someone buy it. There is safety between buyers and sellers. For example , provider of online escrow services.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

In order to maintain competitiveness, corporations are now increasingly looking for opportunities to make their corporations unique than others. Although traditional media serves as a solid medium that spreads company messaging to the world, the trends of information consumption are evolving, however. Corporations are now slowly starting to realize the importance to convert to blogging. By blogging, corporations are able to connect directly to its customer which is not available by traditional media. Generally, corporate blogs are categorized into two major types which are external blogs and internal blogs. External blog refers to weblog that publicly available while internal blog is a weblog that for employees of corporate.


STEPS FOR CORPORATE TO CREATE BLOG :

1. Determine if blogging is suit for your corporate

There are many corporates are attracted by the concept of blogging and start to adopt corporate blogging. However, not all corporates are suitable to adopt corporate blogging. Corporate should examine the target audience and whether blog is effective to develop information to audience.

2. Determine if corporate is willing to invest in blog

Although blogs can be built on free platforms, it is important for the company is willing to invest money into customizing the design of the blog, hiring expert for training, allocating manpower hours for blogging, etc.

3. Create a strategy

After collecting all vital data and having the approval necessary to proceed, it is the time to write a strategy that defines the direction of the blog and its purpose.

4. Select and train bloggers

It is important to decide if the blog will have a single or multiple author because there are multiple expertise idea could be taken. However, it is not necessary that multiple author is better. For those smaller-sized company, it is encouraged to have CEO as the author of the blog to communicate product-related updates, company news, and industry views. Bloggers should be trained on blogging practices , writing tips, and promotions. As to avoid any problem in future, a well-trained blogger should mention clearly corporate blog policies.

5. Writing post

Some companies work with their team to create an editorial calendar that makes it easier for bloggers to author their post. Moreover, blogging frequency is established too which is crucial for reader retention. Company such as Intel list out all those upcoming events, product launches, and post ideas. Company should take note that press release and white papers should be avoid to be included on blog.


Challenges that faced by corporate blogs :

1. Time wasting
The biggest cost of corporate blogging not money but time consuming. It spend 1-2 hours of executives to manage the blog everyday.

2. Hard to get attention
Although internet is developed rapidly nowadays, the truth is that there aren't massive increases in visitors to the web from day to day, also, there are only 24 hours in the days. As there are millions of web around the world, it is not easy to rise to the top of marketplace and getting attention that long lasting.

3. Employees don't represent brand
The mental capacity of some employees that are just out of college aren't a good blogger who are always concern with their activity they had on MySpace and Facebook. They may cast the brand in the wrong light.

4. Difficulty in measuring success
It is difficult to measure the success of a corporate blog since it is not measured by raw numbers like others. The success of a corporate blog is measured upon comments, trackbacks and qualitative intangibles.


Examples of successful corporate blogging:

1. Google
2. Adobe
3. Flickr
4. Facebook
5. Yahoo! Search
6. Dell
7. Digg
8. Linkedln
9. Ask
10. General Motors



Useful links:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_blog
2. http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/10/15/a-guide-to-corporate-blogging/

3. http://mariosundar.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/top-15-corporate-blogs-ranked-may-2008/
4. http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/05/29/the-many-challenges-of-corporate-blogging/

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

Introduction

Firstly, the term E-Government is referring to the use of IT and e-commerce to provide access to government information and delivery of public services to citizens and business partners. It is an efficient and effective way of conducting government business transaction with citizens and businesses and within government themselves.

Implementation

. For an overview, the implementation of E-Government started since the establishment of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) by the Malaysian government and it was launched to lead the country into the Information Age. The status of E-Government implementation in Malaysia so far has been improved tremendously and has achieved a greater height. E-Government is one of the seven flagship applications introduced in MSC. Under the E-Government flagship, seven main projects of the E-Government applications are as follows:

• Project Monitoring System (SPP II)

  

• Human Resource Management Information Systems (HRMIS)
• Generic Office Environment (GOE)
• Electronic Procurement (EP)
• Electronic Services (E-Services)
• Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)
• E-Syariah

Up-to-date, its inplementation is focuses on effectively and efficiently delivering services from the government to the people of Malaysia, enabling the government to become more responsive to the needs of its citizens. In the survey, Malaysia's ranking is 25th out of 32 countries in terms of E-Government usage growth in year 2007.

Citizen’s adoption strategies

Usually, the advancement in technologie

s is forcing governments to be particularly thoughtful to time. In order to make right decision and avoid falling behind, governments must identify and resolve the different issues that have arisen from the transaction period during which traditional and E-Government co-exist. Government should guide and manage the conversion of government into e-government rather than just focusing on introduction of ICTs. Next, the use of ICT to gather the participation of citizens and businesses in public decision must be progress at the same time.

At the same time, capability of the application is also one of the citizens’ considerations to adopt the E-Government. Thus, in order to make sure that the citizens are adopting or accepting the implementation of E-Government, the strategies that the government should carry out in order for them to adopt the implementation of E-government are to increase the citizens’ confidence towards the capability of E-Government by the following strategies:

• Simplifying the navigation of and search for information and online services through the provision of a single entry point.
• Providing a single shared platform for the delivery of government-originating information and news.
• Providing added convenience to the public in the usage of government services

  

  by facilitating the downloading of forms and usage information.
• Educating and informing the public on the process of using the various services offered by government agencues.
• Providing a single shared platform for the public and government agencies to communicate via community based services.
• Providing a platform for interactive and/or transactional government online services to be delivered to the public in a convenient and easy-to-use manner.

However, the upmost important factor that the government should consider is the security issues of citizens’ personal information when they are using the E-Government applications.

Some useful link for references:

· http://www.intanbk.intan.my/psimr/articles/Article1%20-%20Full.pdf

· http://www.american.edu/initeb/ym6974a/egovernment.htm#E-Government

· http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/11/10/nation/19436585&sec=nation

· http://www.mait.com/admin/enews_images/MAIT%20Country%20Intelligence%20eNews96_37.pdf

Some useful link for general knowledge:

· http://www.gov.my

· http://www.mscmalaysia.my

Electronic Currency

What is Electronic currency or money? The Electronic currency is known as e-money, digital currency and digital cash which refer to the money which is exchanged only electronically. The electronic currency which is involved use of the computer networks through the internet and digital stored value systems. Examples of the E-currency are Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and direct deposit.

The main focuses of the E-currency development are focused the following:
• Being able to use it through a wider range of hardware like secured credit card
• Linked bank accounts that would generally be used over the internet which to exchange with the secure micropayment system.

Nowadays, the E-currency is widely used by the internet as the medium of internet related commercial actions such as online shopping and etc. The services of e-currency is allows people to use their credit card to make their payment. So, the electronic currency is provide many advantages which are convenience and privacy because the e-currency just only the transaction at the internet not like the traditional way, the e-currency can do it at anywhere that have a computer, so that is very convenience to the users. Besides, the others benefits are lower transaction fees, increased efficiency of transactions and it will increase many new opportunities with the expansion of economic activities on the internet. However, there has a big risk for the e-currency which is required to provide the owners credit card information to the merchant that they do no know them very well.

The e-currency service companies such as e-gold, paypal and EMO can provide both the buyers and merchant the convenient way to send and receive the payment just by clicking the button and the deal is done. None of the payment methods in the world right now can provide this kind of efficiency capability.

Types of E-currencies
(1) Hard Curreny - PayPal
PayPal is the serves as an electronic alternative to the traditional paper methods like cheques and money orders.

(2) Precious metal – e-gold
E-gold is a digital gold currency which operated by Gold & Silver Reserve Inc., and backed by gold

(3) Non-gold backed or both gold examples such as e-bullion


Related Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_money
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal