Review a local e-commerce sites

Mudah.my is a simple idea: buy and sell in Malaysia. On Mudah.my, you can post ads for free. You can search entire Malaysia for classified advertisements from private individuals and professionals, which includes cars, property, employment, pieces of furniture, electronics or others.Buyer can conveniently buy and sell on Mudah.my anytime anywhere.Selling Property, Car, Mobile Phone, Computer or just about anything else is now easier than ever. Find anything you are looking for on Mudah.my. Mudah.my is a brainchild of 701Search Sdn Bhd, a joint venture between Singapore Press Holdings and Schibsted ASA.

Below Was a video clip which intro of Mudah.com in youtube

Below was the front page which taken at (05 feb 2009)

Service Provided

1. Realtime Account
   InquiryKeep track of your financial status anytime, anywhere with PBeBank.com. You can view your latest account balance, account details, and account transaction history online.
   
   
2. Payment History
   Keep track of your past online payments as far back as 6 months at PBeBank.com and with complete details including date, type, reference number and amount.
   
   
3. Funds Transfers and Payments
   With PBeBank.com, you can conveniently perform funds transfers to any accounts in Public Bank and other local banks. In addition, you can also make credit card and loan payments online.
   
   
4. Online Share Trading
   
   
5. Free Advertising
   
   

Payment Channel

1. Online Credit Card
   -Visa / Master
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Interbank Transfer / Giro / Bank Counter
   -Maybank
   -Alliance Bank
   
   





3. E-banking Payment
   -Open Bill Payment
   
   
4. Cheque Payment
   
   
5. Cash
   - Bank in to the seller after deal.

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





The Electronic Government initiative in Malaysia was launched to lead the country into the Information Age. It has improved both 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; simultaneously, it will improve information flows and processes within government to improve the speed and quality of policy development, coordination and enforcement.

The vision of Electronic Government is a vision for government, businesses and citizenry working together for the benefit of Malaysia and all of its citizens. The vision 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.

The 7 pilot projects of the Electronic Government Flagship Application are asfollows:

1. Project Monitoring System (SPP II)
   
2. Human Resource ManagementInformation System (HRMIS)


3. Generic Office Environment (GOE)


4. Electronic Procurement (EP)


5. Electronic Services (E-Services)


6. Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)


7. E-Syariah

The myGovernment Portal (www.gov.my)acts as the one-stop source of Malaysian government information and services for the citizens.

Malaysian e-government successful applications:

1. Government’s drive for e-government services


2. Electronic Labour Exchange has matched 75,000 potential employees with employers since 2005.


3. SMS alert on e-government services


4. online renewal of driving licenses


5. Electronic filing of income tax forms


6. Voter information


7. Employment opportunities

Recent Survey For E-Government In Malaysia

The recent sruvey about E-Government adoption in Malaysia, which has sone by marketing information group TNS, indicated that the E-Government use is growing but at a slow pace. As shown in the study 15% of the Malaysians have used the internet to access online gevernment services in year 2003 compared to 12% in year 2002. In the survey, Malaysia's ranking is 25th out of 32 countries in term of E-Government usage growth. the Malaysian are also concerned the security of doing transations over the internet and this resulted in the low usage of E-Government services. As far as the group age is concerned, the younger of Malaysian who are under 34, are the primary users of E-Government services. Also noted in the study, households with high incomes and higher level of education actively use the E-Government sevices.

The adoption of e-government bring more convenient to Malaysian and people no longer need to walk to the office to pay their tax form and etc, but pay it in the internet. Nowadays, this implementation still not popular among Malaysian but in the future this will be a great benefit for them.

Citizen’s Adoption Strategies:

• Provide websites with multiple language version such as English, Malay, Mandarin and etc. This will be a convenience to the Malaysian who just familiar with one language only.


• Government should increase awareness about E-Government services through TV and radio advertisements, and organising workshops at shopping malls.


• Government should educating and informing the public about the process of using the various services offered by government agencues.


• Government should improve the service quality of e-Government such as quality content provided on the website, increasing the speed of the response to the citizens concerns with problem solving approach.
  

References:

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


2. http://www.american.edu/initeb/ym6974a/egovernment.htm.


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

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

An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the winning bidder. In economic theory, an auction may refer to any mechanism or set of trading rules for exchange.Electronic auctions(e-auctions)are auctions conducted online.Electronic auction fraud is rated as the top cyber-crime taking place today, and is claiming new victims everyday.Fraud can be conducted by sellers as well as buyers or others. There are bid shilling, non-delivery of merchandise, product authenticity, bid shielding, and non-delivery of payment. Those auction is conducted by online.

There are few step to prevent this:

First, Understand as much as you can about how the internet auctions work, what your obligation are as a buyer, and what the seller’s obligations are before you bid.

Then, Watch out for “Advance-fee demand” – you need to look carefully at any seller of goods or services who wants you to send checks or money orders immediately to a post office box, before you receive the goods or services.

Third, Find out what actions the websites takes if a problem occurs and consider insuring the transaction and shipment.

Next, Do not simply disclose your personal data – if you see e-mail messages from someone you do not know that ask you for personal data for examples, credit card number, account number, or password, do not just send the data without knowing more about who is asking.

Fifth, Review the feedback rating for the seller, and use common sense; if the seller has a history of negative feedback, then the participants do not bid with the particular seller.

Lastly, Must ask the seller when delivery can be expected if not specified in the listing, and about warranty, exchange or return of merchandise you find unsatisfactory.

As a conculsion, consumers must be aware when online auction to prevent any losses.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies.

A corporate blog is a weblog published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. The purposes of blog usage can be grouped in three major fields which are brand building (incl. leadership), customer service (inc. product development) and promotion (incl. sponsorship and advertising). The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. Currently, all major browsers (including Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer 7) support RSS technology, which enables readers to easily read recent posts without actually visiting the blog, which is very useful for low-volume blogs. There are two types of corporate blogs which are external and internal.

Internal Blogs
An internal blog, generally accessed through the corporation's Intranet, is a weblog that any employee can view. Many blogs are also communal, allowing anyone to post to them. The informal nature of blogs may encourage:

• employee participation
• free discussion of issues
• collective intelligence
• direct communication between various layers of an organization
• a sense of community

Internal blogs may be used in lieu of meetings and e-mail discussions, and can be especially useful when the people involved are in different locations, or have conflicting schedules. Blogs may also allow individuals who otherwise would not have been aware of or invited to participate in a discussion to contribute their expertise.

External Blogs
An external blog is a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. It is often used to announce new products and services (or the end of old products), to explain and clarify policies, or to react on public criticism on certain issues. It also allows a window to the company culture and is often treated more informally than traditional press releases, though a corporate blog often tries to accomplish similar goals as press releases do. In some corporate blogs, all posts go through a review before they're posted. Some corporate blogs, but not all, allow comments to be made to the posts.

External corporate blogs, by their very nature, are biased, though they can also offer a more honest and direct view than traditional communication channels. Nevertheless, they remain public relations tools.

Marketers might expect to have product evangelists or influencers among the audience of an external blog. Once they find them, they may treat them like VIPs, asking them for feedback on exclusive previews, product testing, marketing plans, customer services audits, etc.

The business blog can provide additional value by adding a level of credibility that is often unobtainable from a standard corporate site. The informality and increased timeliness of information posted to blogs assists with increasing transparency and accessibility in the corporate image. Business blogs can interact with a target market on a more personal level while building link credibility that can ultimately be tied back to the corporate site.

The key prerequisites for successful corporate blogs are:

• Symmetric communication (include 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).

Setting-up corporate blog often leads to challenges concerning the coordination of the overall on-line communication as companies use various other tools: corporate web pages, product or event sites and co-branded content via e-media presence.

Here are some challenges of corporate blogging:

1. Most don’t receive a lot of traffic: It is difficult to hit the marketplace as they wish.
2. May require a lot of time: It takes time to set up and update the blogs.
3. Being conversational is unnatural: It is difficult to dictates the voice and spirit of blogs created by employees.
4. As employee bloggers become popular, brands get concerned: Blogger has become more popular than the blog itself.
5. Our employees don’t represent our brand: Some employees may cast the brand name in the wrong way.f. Hard to measure success: There is no specific number or formula to measure the success of a corporate blog.
   

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

Mobile payment (M-payments) is new and rapidly-adopting alternative payment method where a consumer can use a mobile phone to pay for wide range of services and digital or hard goods instead of paying with cash, check or credit cards. The goods and the services that can be purchase using this payment method include:

• Music, videos, ring tones, online game subscription or items, wallpapers and other digital goods.
• Transportation fare (bus, subway or train), parking meters and other services
• Books, magazines, tickets and other hard goods

There is definitely a great market opportunity for mobile payment system to implement in Malaysia since almost 88% of the Malaysian population are subscribing to the mobile phone service.

There are few types of mobile transaction can be made:

• Premium SMS transaction
• WAP (mobile web)

Premium SMS transactions are the most common in Malaysia where most of mobile users download their wallpaper, music, ring tones and mobile games by purchasing them through SMS payment. SMS payment requires buyers to send a certain code to certain number to confirm that they want to buy those products.

WAP payment is similar to SMS where buyers are required to select product that they want from the web and a confirmation message will be displayed to them with the details of product before buyer can confirm it.

Maxis and Maybank in Malaysia both provide a simple m-banking service for subscribers (bill payment, balance enquiries, fund transfers), which can also be used to top-up Maxis accounts, download Maxis content and pay for products such as pizzas and movie tickets.

Example of m-payment system that is available in Malaysia is Mobile Money (MM Wallet). Mobile Money is a PIN-based Mobile Payment Solution designed by Mobile Money International Sdn Bhd to address the limitations and bottlenecks created by cash, cheques and credit cards. It allows registered users to pay for goods and services at anytime, anywhere using only a mobile phone coupled with a 6-digit security PIN via SMS.

A shopper must have a savings, current or credit card account with participating banks in order to pay using Mobile Money. It functions like a Credit Card if a shopper applies for a "Pay by Mobile Phone" credit card account (eg: Hong Leong Mobile Credit Card) and it functions as a Debit Card if it is tied to shopper's savings or current account.

In order to encourage consumers to using this m-payment system, few strategies need to be implementing:

1. Educate consumers about mobile payments, how to use and introduce its functions (e.g. bill payment, mobile purchase)
2. Enhance security and confidence to mobile users
3. Collaborate with more banks and companies to widen the ability to pay via mobile at the same time it helps to increased customer’s satisfaction and confidence
   
   

Electronic currency

Electronic Currency (also known as e-money, electronic cash, electronic currency, digital money, digital cash or digital currency) refers to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically. Electronic currency also can be defined as monetary value, as represented by a claim on the issuer, which is:stored on an electronic device, issued on receipt of funds and, accepted as a means of payment by persons other than the issuer.

Electronic money is therefore a prepaid means of payment, that can be used to make payments to multiple persons, where the persons are distinct legal or natural entities. It can be card based or account based and used entirely online.

While electronic money has been an interesting problem for cryptography (see for example the work of David Chaum and Markus Jakobsson), to date, use of digital cash has been relatively low-scale. One rare success has been Hong Kong's Octopus card system, which started as a transit payment system and has grown into a widely used electronic cash system. Singapore also has an electronic money implementation for its public transportation system (commuter trains, bus, etc), which is very similar to Hong Kong's Octopus card and based on the same type of card (FeliCa). There are also one implementation is in the Netherlands, known as Chipknip.

Advantages

Banks offer many services to the customer that transfer funds, contribute to their retirement plans and offer a variety of other services without having to handle physical cash or checks. Customers do not have to wait in lines and this provides a lower-hassle environment.

Debit cards and online bill payments allow immediate transfer of funds from an individual's personal account to a business's account without any actual paper transfer of money. This offers a great convenience to many people and businesses alike.

Disadvantages

Although many benefit to electronic currency, there are also many disadvantages. These include fraud, failure of technology, possible tracking of individuals and loss of human interaction.

Fraud over digital cash has been a pressing issue in recent years. Hacking into bank accounts and illegal retrieval of banking records has led to a widespread invasion of privacy and has promoted identity theft.

refrence:
http://www.solarnavigator.net/venture_capital/electronic_money_transfers.htm
https://www.amazines.com/Electronic_Currency_related.html

Credit Card debts: Causes and Prevention

A credit card is part of a system of payments named after the small plastic card issued to users of the system. It is a card entitling its holder to buy goods and services based on the holders promise to pay for these goods and services.The issuer of the card grants a line of credit to the consumer from which the user can borrow money for payment to a merchant or as a cash advance to the user. Due to the reason of the convenience of the credit card, it become so popular among consumers. Consumers can buy things they like without paying cash. but this also become a threat to consumers which is heavy credit card debt.

Credit card debt is an example of unsecured consumer debt, accessed through ISO 7810 plastic credit cards. Debt results when a client of a credit card company purchases an item or service through the card system. Debt accumulates and increases via interest and penalties when the consumer does not pay the company for the money he or she has spent. The results of not paying this debt on time are that the company will charge a late payment penalty and report the late payment to credit rating agencies. Being late on a payment will be charged a penalty. And the penalty itself increases the amount of debt the consumer has.

We would like to tell that when you are too deep in credit card debt, there have such potential which 15% or more of your monthly income is going to pay your credit card bills, you have triggered one of the many warning signs that your credit card debt is out of control. There are other triggers too which are paying the monthly payments on one credit card by taking out a cash advance on another credit card.

Causes of credit card debt:

a. For the new users of using credit card, they maybe getting too excited and they like to buy branded products such as Nikel shoes, LV handbag, Rolex watch and etc without control and planning.

b. Low knowledge for using credit card. Debters alway not alert about the high penalty of the credit card if they not pay back on time. There are really high interest loans in disguise such as Finance charge, Annual fee, Cash advance fee, Late payment fee and etc. These interest loans will make the debt become heavier and heavier.

Prevention:

a. Develop a budget: The first step toward taking control of your spending is to do a realistic assessment of how much money you take in and how much money you spend. Start by listing your income from all sources. Then, writing down all your expenses, even those that seem insignificant, is a helpful way to track your spending patterns, identify necessary expenses, and prioritize the rest.

b. Keep your credit limit low. You should call the credit card issuer and ask him or her to lower your credit limit. A low credit limit will help you resist the urge to splurge.

c. Prefer use cash to pay. When we see the colourful cash pay for the goods, we will be more alert and will automatically ask ourself that am I have spent too much? Through this we can control ourself to buy only the necessary products.

d. Self control and discipline. One of the best practices is to have a direct set up so that able to pay back the full amount each month and use in emergencies. Thus, self control and discipline to keep these cards in wallet and would not overspend.

Reference:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_debt#Credit_card_debt_statistics
3. http://ecommercesite.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/credit-card-debts-causes-and
   prevention/
4. http://www.naturalnews.com/001101.html

The application of pre-paid cash card for consumers.

The application of pre-paid cash card for consumers




What is prepaid cash card??

Prepaid cash cards are plastic cards, which fall under the pay first category of plastic payments.A prepaid cash card looks like a credit or debit card, and gives users the ability to purchase products and services with a card but with a crucial difference which means a person can only spend the balance that has been preloaded onto the card. This means there is no risk of running into debt as it has no credit or overdraft facility Prepaid cash cards can be used to make payment for goods and services and even to withdraw money. Before use, the user needs to load the card with a sum of money. Prepaid cash cards are designed to be used as a safer alternative as compare to cash.

Basically hows this card works??

First of all,load the amount of money you want onto the prepaid cash card. That will be your spending limit.

Once you purchased, the sum will be subtracted from the card balance. You can always pump in more money when the balance runs low by transferring money from your regular checking or savings account.

Application of Prepaid Cash Cards

There are few application such as:

1. Paying bill – Rent, utilities, insurance, car payment, and cell phone bills can be paid instantly.

2.Transfer money – Transferring money to friends and family

3. Shop anywhere as long as the card using is accepted at different retailers

4. Withdrawing cash from an ATM

5. Topping up your mobile phone

6. Buying groceries and petrol

7. Internet shopping including eBay

8. Pay for toll – Use Touch n Go card as an example

The benefit of using prepaid cash card

1. Free balance alerts –Some card providers will inform users on how much cash they have.

2. Remain in control of user money, keep track all of activity online or by phone.

3. Avoid over spending; always know exactly how much money you have to spend. The prepaid card can help protect you from over spending.

How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

Nowadays, many people are relying on the Internet to connect and communicate with each other throughout the world and this is why Internet is said to be world without borders. While we want to become the member of some websites or to subscribe the services provided by them, this website will require us to register some of our personal information such as name, age, gender, date of birth, email address, password and etc. Besides, when we are accessing the online buying, we need to fill in our financial data like names, addresses, phone numbers, bank and credit card account numbers and etc. Information transmitted over the Internet has a higher degree of security risk than internal networks because Internet are open to anyone. So in order to protect our personal and financial data, we suggest some of the prevention methods:

a. Install a firewall
A firewall is an integrated collection of security measures designed to prevent unauthorized electronic access to a networked computer system. It is also a device or set of devices configured to permit, deny, encrypt, decrypt, or proxy all computer traffic between different security domains based upon a set of rules and other criteria

b. Password protect
Create a strong password or pass-phrase to files or hardware that we use to store our personal and financial data. In creating the password, we should use a reliability security system on the files or hardware so that it wouldn't be hacked easily. Furthermore, we should not create a password which can be easily guess by others. Besides, do not reveal any personal information or particularly passwords to anyone.

c. Trusted site
When the Internet users want to make online purchase, they are advised to make purchase only at trusted site, well-known, or sites that are using reputable payment processors such as Paypal or Google Checkout. To prevent our valuable information been stolen by the hackers, we need to check for padlock icon that verify the particular website is safe before we make the purchase. Thus this can ensure that our personal and financial data will be protected and remain confidential.

d. Avoid accessing private information in public
You are advise not to access your private information when using the public wireless. Besides, when you are accessing your private information in cyber cafe, make sure you log out completely and never choose to save login information such as user name and password on computers. If the users want to do such activities, they are advise to do it at home using their private computer.

The application of 3rd party certification programme in Malaysia

Third-party certification is a scientific process by which a product or service is reviewed by a reputable and unbiased third party to verify that a set of criteria, claims or standards are being met. Certification Authority (CA) is a trusted third party in a public key security system is responsible for vouchsafing the identity of users and issuing them with certificates that bind the public key to their identities.

The most famous application of 3rd party certification program in Malaysia is provided by the MSC Trustgate.com Sdn Bhd. MSC Trustgate.com Sdn Bhd was incorporated in 1999 and is a licensed Certification Authority (CA) under the operation of the Multimedia Super Corridor. Certification Authority is the body given the license to operate as a trusted third party in the issuance of digital certificates.

Trustgate provides trusted and encryption technology that secure your online communication, hence protect your vital business information from prying eyes. Trustgate is the first Malaysian Internet trust solutions company authorized to offer 128-bit SSL Server ID that is now used in financial institutions, insurance companies, e-government, healthcare organizations and other online trading.

Besides, Trustgate also provided other services such as Managed PKI, SSL Certificate, Managed Security Services,Personal ID, MyTRUST, MyKAD ID, SSL VPN, VeriSign Certified Training and Application Development.

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

First of all, i would like to share with all the reader a video clip which i have watch in youtube.com.



Nowadays, people rely on computers to create, store and manage critical information. Consequently, it is important for users to aware that computer security plays a major role in protecting their data from loss, damage, and misuse. Similarly, online security has been online trader’s main concern in protecting their websites from potential threats.

These threats are:

1. MALICIOUS ATTACKS
   
   Attacks that specifically aim to do harm are known as premeditated or malicious attacks. They can be further broken down into attacks caused by malicious code and those caused by intentional misrepresentation. Misrepresentation is most often seen with regard to on line fraud and identity theft (see below). Malicious code, on the other hand, is at the root of so-called "crackings" and "hackings" - notable examples of which include computer viruses, data theft, and Denial of Service (DOS) attacks
   




2. Virus
   
   Which is a potentially damaging computer program that affects, or infects, a computer negatively by altering the way computer works without the user’s knowledge or permission. Once the virus infects the computer, it can spread throughout and may damage files and system software.
   




3. Worm
   
   Worm is a program that copies itself repeatedly, for example in memory or on network, using up resources and possibly shutting down the computer or network. It exploits vulnerabilities in operating systems (OSs), network services, and applications to propagate and cause damage
   
   
   
4. Trojan horses
   
   Trojan horses (named after a Greek myth) is a program that hides within or appear to be legitimate, but in fact contain malware such as keyloggers
   and spyware

Phishing: Examples and its prevention methods

What is Phishing??

Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites such as PayPal, eBay,Facebook and YouTube are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Even when using server authentication it requires skill to detect that the website is fake. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies.

1.PayPal phishing example

In an example PayPal phish, spelling mistakes in the e-mail and the presence of an IP address in the link are both clues that this is a phishing attempt. Another giveaway is the lack of a personal greeting, although the presence of personal details would not be a guarantee of legitimacy. A legitimate Paypal communication will always greet the user with his or her real name and not just with a generic greeting like,"Dear Accountholder." Other signs that the message is a fraud are misspellings of simple words, bad grammar and the threat of consequences such as account suspension if the recipient fails to comply with the message's requests.

2.TrustedBank phishing email

An example of a phishing e-mail, disguised as an official e-mail from a (fictional) bank. The sender is attempting to trick the recipient into revealing secure information by "confirming" it at the phisher's website.

Phishing prevention method

Nowaday,phishing case keep increasing from year to year.However, there are few method to prevent phishing.1st of all, the user ownself should alway be aware and alert of any email regarding changing personal information. Do not reply to any suspicious email. The user ownself should not too depend on clicking link that you're unsure of. For example, if you receive an email from Ebay requesting personal information such as your user name or password, visit Ebay directly by typing http://www.ebay.com/ into your browser to check on your account status. By doing so, the user can avoided from being leaded to a fake website through link. Besides, an antivirus,anti-spyware and firewall is very useful in order to prevent any unauthorised access to your personal information. Make sure the antivirus is alway up-to-date.Besides that, you must read the message carefully whether there are any errors on it. It is because the errors found can determine whether the message is sent by the particular institution or the phisher.Be cautious about opening any attachment or downloading any files from emails you receive, regardless of who sent them. These files can contain viruses or other software that can weaken your computer's security.

An example of an E-Commerce failure and its causes

The problem of establishing successful e-commerce is clearly evident in all areas of the fashion industry, including apparel, accessories, shoes, home furnishing, and fabrics. The demise of boo.com, a British-based Website, provides a good example. Boo.com was a British Internet company founded by Swedes Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander and Patrik Hedelin that famously went bust following the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. Boo.com launched in the Autumn of 1999 selling branded fashion apparel with blazing technology designs over the Internet; however, after spending $135 million of venture capital in just 18 months, it was placed into receivership on 18 May 2000 and liquidated.

The reason why the Boo.com failed because got problems with the user experience. The boo.com website was widely criticized as poorly designed for its target audience, going against many usability conventions. The site relied heavily on JavaScript and Flash technology to display pseudo-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 for the site to load (as broadband technologies were still not widely available at that time). The site's front page did contain the warning, "this site is designed for 56K modems and above". It created an expensive online magazine only faintly linked to the shopping experience. It committed itself to "entertaining" users, on the oft-followed premise (no doubt compelling to ageing baby-boomers) that people under 30 would delight at receiving pale online imitations of TV.

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 were visiting to see the website but frustrated those who simply wanted to buy clothes.

Its interface was also complex with a hierarchical system that required the user to answer four or five different questions before revealing that there were no products in stock in a particular sub-section. The same basic questions then had to be answered again until results were found.

Important product information was given about 1 inch square to describe the product (about 15 words) and users had to use non-standard scrolling mechanisms to view the next 15 words. Unless users knew exactly how to use the menus, the site was not forgiving for novices. Boo also made great use of tiny icons and horizontal scrolling, both disastrous on the web. Boo also used unfamiliar words such as the boobag rather than shopping cart. Boo committed the sort of rolled-gold usability screw-ups that every half-sentient student of Web usability could identify

Discuss how E-Commerce can reduce cycle time, improve employees’ empowerment and facilitate customer support.

REDUCING CYCLE TIME

What is cycle time?It defined as the total time that it takes to complete a recurring task—usually one essential to the business's output.E-Commerce can reduce the cycle time by eliminates the traditional purchase approach, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive.Eliminating steps in business process and take a shorter time to complete a business transaction. E-commerce allows people to carry out businesses without the barriers of time or distance. The process of middle man and intermediaries will be eliminated and the suppliers or producers of certain products can send products directly to customers. By this, the company can reduce unnecessary cost and gain competitive advantages towards other companies. For example Dell and FED-EX.

IMPROVES EMPLOYEES' EMPOWERMENT


Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behave, take action, and control work and decision making in autonomous ways. It is the state of feeling self-empowered to take control of one's own destiny.E-commerce can improve employees’ empowerment by allowing the decentralization of decision making and authority via collaborative commerce. It grants power to employees in dealing with process of capturing, researching and leveraging business information. Employee empowerment divided into 3 levels. The first level is encouraging. It encourages employees to play more active roles in their work. Second level is involving which gives employees responsibility for improving the way that things are done. Third level is the enabling the employees bigger decisions making power without referring to seniors or managers. As a result, it will benefit organization in term of getting closer to customers, improving service quality, innovating continuously, increasing productivity and gaining the competitive edge.



Facilitate customer support


E-commerce also facilitates customer support by providing a wide range of technological solutions and communication opportunity.Besides, it can provide unlimited shopping hours for customers to place their order as it is run on a 24 hours basis.It also provides electronic bulletin for customer in order to report fault and dissatisfaction. Customer has direct access to product information updates, and other promotion by visiting the online stores. Through online, it creates an interactive and more easier way for customer to buy the products that they need compared to the traditional stores.

An example of an E-Commerce success and its causes

Amazon.com, a successful example of an e-commerce, which is an American electronic commerce (e-commerce) company in Seattle, Washington. It is America's largest online retailer, with nearly three times the internet sales revenue of runner up Staples, Inc. Why Amazon.com is a successful E-commerce business?

There are several reason:

1. Develop a searching system
   Amazon.com opened with a searchable database of over one million titles. Customers could enter search information, prompting the system to sift through the company database and find the desired titles. The program then displayed information about the selection on a customer's computer screen, and gave the customer the option to order the books with a credit card and have the books shipped in a just a few days.
   
   




2. Carry few stock in hand
   Unlike its large competitors, such as Barnes & Noble and Borders, Amazon.com carried only about 2,000 titles in stock in its Seattle warehouse. Most orders through Amazon.com were placed directly through wholesalers and publishers, so no warehouse was needed. Amazon.com would simply receive the books from the other sources, then ship them to the customer.
   
   




3. Broaden the company's distribution capabilities.
   Amazon.com broaden the company's distribution capabilities, and to ease the strain on the existing distribution center that came from such a high volume of orders, in September 1997 Bezos announced that Amazon.com would be opening an East Coast distribution center in New Castle, Delaware. There was also a 70 percent expansion of the company's Seattle center. The improvements increased the company's stocking and shipping capabilities and reduced the time it took to fill customers' orders. The Delaware site not only got Amazon.com closer to East Coast customers, but also to East Coast publishers, which decreased Amazon.com's receiving time. With the new centers in place, Bezos set a goal for the company of 95 percent same-day shipping of in-stock orders, getting orders to the customers much faster than before.
   
   




4. "Associate" program
   "Associate" program allowed individuals with their own web sites to choose books of interest and place advertising for them on their own sites, allowing visitors to purchase those books. The customer was linked to Amazon.com, which took care of all the orders. Associates were sent reports on their sales and made a 3 to 8 percent commission from books sold on their sites. The Associates program really began to take off in mid-1997, when Amazon.com formed partnerships with Yahoo, Inc. and America Online, Inc. Both companies agreed to give Amazon.com broad promotional capabilities on their sites, two of the most visited sites on the Web. As the success continued, Amazon also struck deals with many other popular sites, including Netscape, GeoCities, Excite, and AltaVista.
   
   




5. Other services
   Amazon.com also provided many services such as optional gift wrapping of packages, and the "eye" notification service, which sent customers e-mails alerting them when a new book in their favorite subject or by their favorite author came into stock. The site also offered the ability for customers not only to write their comments about different books and have them published on the site, but to read other customers' comments about books they were interested in buying.

The history and evolution of E-commerce

The meaning of electronic commerce has changed over the last 30 years. Originally, electronic commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. The growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. Another form of e-commerce was the airline reservation system typified by Sabre in the USA and Travicom in the UK. Online shopping was invented in the UK in 1979 by Michael Aldrich and during the 1980s it was used extensively particularly by auto manufacturers such as Ford,Peugeot-Talbot, General Motors and Nissan. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.

Perhaps it is introduced from the Telephone Exchange Office, or maybe not.The earliest example of many-to-many electronic commerce in physical goods was the Boston Computer Exchange, a marketplace for used computers launched in 1982. The first online information marketplace, including online consulting, was likely the American Information Exchange, another pre-Internet online system introduced in 1991.

Although the Internet became popular worldwide in 1994, it took about five years to introduce security protocols and DSL allowing continual connection to the Internet. And by the end of 2000, 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.

According to all available data, e-commerce sales continued to grow in the next few years and, by the end of 2007, ecommerce sales accounted for 3.4 percent of total sales.

Ecommerce has a great deal of advantages over “brick and mortar” stores and mail order catalogs. Consumers can easily search through a large database of products and services. They can see actual prices, build an order over several days and email it as a “wish list” hoping that someone will pay for their selected goods. Customers can compare prices with a click of the mouse and buy the selected product at best prices.



As the conclusion, i have added the following table to show the evolution of e-commerce.

Our Secret - All about Us

1. Hi! All my friends, my name is Chin Han Sheng. I'm from Penang and i'm 20 years old. I'm not tall as yao ming but not consider short. This is not the 1st time I'm writing blogs. i have my own blog since I'm 16 years old. My hobbies are playing computer games, playing basketball, playing badminton, playing volleyball, writing blogs and etc. Why i love blogs as well? It is because i can write whatever i want in my world, release pressure and having a blog i can meet more friends all over the world.Visiting http://www.friendster.com/, http://www.coool.com/, http://www.yahoo.com/, http://www.hotmail.com/, http://www.facebook.com/ are becoming the routine activities in my lifes. These are the 5 most website i love to visit everyday. I can search information that will be used on my assignment and checking mails from hotmail to yahoo. Besides, I can meet new friends and playing mini games together by using java from friendster to facebook. And the last one, coool.com. This website is a forum which is in Chinese language. I can learn more extra information at the forum. I love this 5 website and keep visiting them everyday
   
   
2. Hey, nice to meet you all. This is my first time I'm writing a blog. The reasons why i writing this blog because i want more people to know about me as well as making new friends from around the world. So let me briefly introduce myself. My name is Lim Seng Kaei. My friend usually call me Kenny. I'm 22 years old now and I'm come from Kedah. Now i'm continuing my study at University Tunku Abdul Rahman. My hobbies are listening to the music, reading and playing badminton with my friends when I'm free. Besides, i also like to surfing to the Internet. The most favourite websites that i like to visit are http://www.yahoo.com/, http://www.wikipedia.com/, http://www.chinapress.com.my/, www.haoting.com and www.friendster.com. I used yahoo and wikipedia as my search engine to search for useful information which will enlarge my general knowledge as well as when I'm doing my assignment. chinapress is a E-Newspapers website, so it's becoming the routine website that i need to visit every day because i want to know the latest news that happened around the world. When i want to listen to the latest songs, i will use haoting for that purpose. In order to stay contact with my old friends i will used friendster for that purpose.
   


3. Hey, how do you do? I so glad that you visit our blog. First of all, my name is Chong Yew Shem, 23years old, from Seremban, Negeri Sembilan. Nowadays, blog is very usefulness because via blog i can know more friends, sharing my happiness, sadness and etc. During my free time, I like sport especially playing badminton with my best friends. Besides, I like to sing songs while playing the guitar. Watching movies and playing computer games are my hobbies too. Moreover, most of my free time, i like to surf the websites such as www.cforum1.cari.com.my, www.friendster.com, www.utar.edu.my, www.gougou.com and www.pps.tv to search information for the education purposes or just for entertainment.
   
   
   
4. Hi everyone,I'm chee seng. I'm 23 years old.I live in petaling jaya.Now I'm studying at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, UTAR and this year is my final year of my universiti life. The begining of this year is so special for me, because i have started my own business which is selling CNY biscuits. Although it is consider as a small business, but i proud of myself because i had used all the knowledge that i had learn from the Universiti in handling my business such as, how to manage a business, how to motivate my employee, how to serve my customers and etc. Besides, I feel this is an oppotunity to train myself to become a sucessful entrepreneur on future. My hobbies are playing badminton, playing basketball, singing and shopping. I will visit Green Box once a month with my buddy to pratice my singing skill. Besides, i love shooping during weekend, with my beloved girlfriend. Opps, forget to tell you'll im already have girlfriend. For those who admire me, I have to say sorry to u'll, hahaha. I'm feel very happy to have a group of buddy, which is my groupmate, in my university lifes. They bring me a lot of happiness and unforgetable memory.