Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Corporate Blogging

A corporate weblog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. 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.

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

Internal :

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

External:

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.

The advantages of blogs from an organizational perspective include the following:

• The consumer and citizen are potentially better informed and this can only be good for the long-term health of our societies and economies.


• Blogs have potential to help the organization develop stronger relationships and brand loyalty with its customers, as they interact with the ‘human face’ of the organization through blogs.


• Blogs, in an intranet environment, can be an excellent way of sharing knowledge within the organization.


• Blogs can be a positive way of getting feedback, and keeping your finger on the pulse, as readers react to certain pieces, suggest story ideas, etc.


• Blogs can build the profile of the writer, showcasing the organization as having talent and expertise.

The disadvantages of blogs are:

1. Most people don’t have very much to say that’s interesting, and/or are unable to write down their ideas in a compelling and clear manner.


2. I have often found that the people who have most time to write have least to say, and the people who have most to say don’t have enough time to write it. Thus, the real expertise within the organization lays hidden, as you get drowned in trivia.


3. Like practically everything else on the Web, blogs are easy to start and hard to maintain. Writing coherently is one of the most difficult and time-consuming tasks for a human being to undertake. So, far from blogs being a cheap strategy, they are a very expensive one, in that they eat up time. As a result, many blogs are not updated, thus damaging rather than enhancing the reputation of the organization.


4. Organizations are not democracies. The Web makes many organizations look like disorganizations, with multiple tones and opinions. Contrary to what some might think, the average customer prefers it if the organization they are about to purchase from is at least somewhat coherent.

Pros and Cons of the Corporate Blog

Pros
- Dialogue with consumers

- Regular turnover of content to give consumers reason to return

- Seen to be embracing Web 2.0- Search engine visibility

- Requires little budget input

Cons
- Time consuming activity, keeping content fresh and updated

- Legal minefield, privacy concerns

- Lack of control vs. over-moderation

- Sourcing relevant “voice”/blogger

- Hard to measure ROI

References:

Advantages and Disadvantages of Corporate Blogging

• http://info.shine.com/Career-Advice-Articles/Career-Building/5-advantages-of-corporat
• -blogging/1682/cid28.aspx
• http://ourecommerze.blogspot.com/2008/07/advantages-and-disadvantages-of.html
• http://www.enterpriseblogs.info/corporate-blogging/advantages
• http://www.barefeetstudios.com/media/pdf/barefeet-blog-for-biz.pdf
• http://www.backbonemedia.com/blogsurvey/23-advantages-corporate-blog.htm

Pros and Cons of the corporate blogging

• http://www.corporateblogging.info/2005/11/pros-and-cons-of-author-blogs.asp
• http://agwired.com/2005/02/26/pros-and-cons-of-corporate-blogging/
• http://www.helium.com/items/254062-the-pros-and-cons-of-corporate-blogging
• http://www.publish.com/c/a/Online-Media/Panel-Sees-Pros-and-Cons-to-Corporate-Blogs/
• http://www.morebusiness.com/corporate-blogging

Top 15 of the Corporate Blogging

Review of "how to lose your ID easily to Frauster at home"

Based on the post of “how to lose your ID easily to Fraudster at Home”, we can see that there are many computer users like to store their private data into electronic form.

The issue we concern about is whether the private data are filed or destroyed properly in the computers. As what the post has mentioned, the research already proved that a lot of private information could be found in the computer rubbish bins easily such as bank account details, passport information, credit cards details and etc. Many people use to put the documents that consist of such information into rubbish bin without delete them permanently. Some people think that such information is not confidential and important therefore they do not take further effort to keep or destroy the documents properly. However, it might be very useful for fraudsters. For example, IC number might be seemed very usual in your eyes, but the fraudsters might use your IC number to do illegal things, and the trouble will come after you.

Furthermore, people like to use their IC, date of birthday as their bank account passwords, so such information might not be deleted and still remain in the computers. Consequently, fraudster might through illegal ways to steal the information from the computers and get access to the bank account of owners for illegal transfer of moneys.

Usually, fraudster will hack the computers to steal the private information without your notice. Some fraudsters might directly steal the information from your computers when you are away with your computer. Normally, it is done by the person who you trust such as your friends. Such actions are illegal.

As a conclusion, the owners are advised not to retain the confidential information in the computers to prevent loss of confidential information.

Review a local, transactional e-commerce site

There are many e-commerce site that have been developed nowadays due to its convenience and cost savings. The e-commerce site that we review this week is www.jojoboutique.net. It is an online apparel boutique that sell girl's cloths, accessories and others. The products have been categorized by type to let the purchasers to go directly to the specific product they want.

This particular e-commerce site has provide its user to purchase apparel online.This website has been recognized by shop2u, which is an experienced online retailer who gives recognition to online sellers' identity. The product is shown by clear image and it can be zoomed in for larger image for online purchaser to have a clearer picture for the product. There is some links on the top of the web page to which encourage easy navigation from this page to another. The links gives more information to purchasers such as payment method, and other services to support the online purchase.The website provide the contact number, msn and e-mail address of the owner to let the purchaser to contact directly to the owner. Other than that, there is search engine in the left hand side of the web page.The function of search engine is to let the purchaser to find what they want in the web page.

The purchaser can choose their product by clicking once to the image of the product. If the purchaser have chosen the product they want, they can put into shopping cart. Shopping cart is like a trolly in off-line transaction. When the purchaser have all its needed product in the shopping cart, he can make payment for his products. The payment method for this site is by transfering money into the owner's account which has clearly stated in payment method.

However, the download speed for this site is quite slow, sometimes can't be connected. Besides, the website is just for its own member, outsider is not allowed to buy product on this site. Therefore, purchasers have to registered as member first to make online purchase there. All the information needed to become a member is quite private and personal, therefore, online security for this website is particularly important. Other than that, the website is using chinese as word to communicate with purchaser. It makes non-chinese purchaser extremely hard to use the site for online purchasing.

Review a local, transactional e-commerce site

There are more and more e-commerce site

Discussion on E-learning Offered in Malaysian Universities: Pros & Cons

Electronic learning or E-Learning is the used of technology to support the learning process. There are significant numbers on Malaysian Universities has been implementing e-learning in order to provide their student with a more flexible and convenient learning method. Below is some discussion about the pros and cons of e-learning from student perspective.

Pros:

1. More Flexible

The used of e-learning facilitates students to attend their courses via internet and also allows them to post any questions about their courses in everywhere and any time. The study hours is much more flexible as compared to study at campus where schedule has been set by the university.

2. Cost Saving

Students can cut down their expenses if studying online because they can save from cost of traveling, accommodation as well as foods. They can pursue their courses in home rather than go campus that is far from their home.

3. Wider scope of knowledge

Another benefit of e-learning is it allows the large amount of information and knowledge available for their students. Students who attend 2 hours lecturer in classroom can only obtained little amount information but study online will be more flexible and student can obtain more knowledge as online courses is available for 24 hours.

4. Better interaction with lecturers

Most students have found that e-learning can improve their interaction with their lecturers. Students can email question to their respective lecturers or tutors about any queries of their subject more quickly. Lecturers and tutors will response more quickly via internet instead of making appointment with them during consultation hours.

Cons:

1. Lack of face to face communication

The used of e-learning has eliminated the importance of face to face communication between students and lectures. There will be lack of understanding from lecturers on their students need.

2. Lack of motivation

Students will be getting lazy with the used of e-learning as there is no fixed time for them to attend their courses. Therefore, they will become less motivated because courses is available 24 hours and most of them will delay their study time.

References:

http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid26_gci769787,00.html

http://www.articlealley.com/article_78603_45.html

The application of pre-paid cash card for consumers

Touch’n Go

Touch’n Go card is an electronic purse that can be used at all highways in Malaysia. The credit card sized smartcard made of plastic with Philips’ MIFARE microchip technology embedded in it. Normally, Touch’n Go card can be used in major public transports in Klang Valley, selected parking sites and theme parks. The users can use the card as long as it is pre-loaded with electronic cash. The cash can be reloaded lots of places such as toll plazas, train stations, Automated Teller Machines, Cash Deposit Machines, Petrol kiosks and at authorized third outlets. A standard card can be purchased at the price of RM20. It consists of RM10 deposit value and RM10 usage amount. The cards may be reloaded from 10 denominations ranging from RM10, RM20, RM50, RM100, RM150, RM200, RM250, RM300, RM400 and RM500. The minimum reload value for a credit card issued in Malaysia is RM100.

Touch'n Go
Maybank reload the Touch'n Go

Octopus Card

Octopus is an electronic payment system using a contactless smartcard. Octopus is a trademark of Octopus Cards Limited. In the beginning we aimed to develop a simple way to pay fares on public transport in Hong Kong. Then we extended our reach into simple micropayments for purchases in retail outlets and a simple way for cardholders to gain access to buildings and schools and to identify themselves. Today, over 2,000 service providers accept Octopus, and new uses are regularly being added. Octopus' success is important to Hong Kong people not only because it's part of everyday life - it's also made everyday life so much easier.
The Octopus card can be purchased from any public transportation company’s customer service centre such as MTR’s and KCR’s. When first purchasing the card, HK$50 is included as refundable deposit, and the remaining value will be stored in the card in the card for normal payments. The card separate for few types:
Adult: Deposit $50 + Stored Value $100 = Price HK$150
Child: Deposit $50 + Stored Value $20 = Price HK$70
Senior: Deposit $50 + Stored Value $20 = Price HK$70

Octopus card

HongKong Travel

Chicago Card

The Chicago Card and the Chicago Card Plus are contactless smart cards used by riders of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and Pace to electronically pay for bus and train fares in the city of Chicago, Illinois, USA and the surrounding suburbs. The blue Chicago Card is a stored value card. Users add value to the card at CTA vending machines or at select retail locations, and turnstiles or fareboxes deduct value from the card. Users usually register cards with CTA and can receive a replacement in the event of theft, loss, or damage to the card. The blue-and-gold Chicago Card Plus is an account-based card. Users link the card to either a credit card, debit card, or employer-provided transit benefit program. The cards may be set up as monthly passes or on a pay-per-use basis. The account reloads from the linked source either when the monthly pass expires or when a user-defined threshold is passed as a pay-per-use card. Because of this direct link to personal accounts, all Chicago Card Pluses are registered to users. Both cards can be obtained for free from CTA's headquarters and website. Chicago Cards can also be obtained at retail outlets throughout Chicago.

Chicago Card

The application of pre-paid cash cash for consumer

Credit Card debts: Causes and Prevention

Causes of consumers Overspent & Credit Card debt

Nowadays, consumer always deals with problem of overspending. The creation of credit card is the main root of overspending. However, why most of the consumer will encounter with this problem ???? Below are some relevant reasons:

1. Lack of knowledge of money management

As we know that most consumers do not have the knowledge on how to manage their money. Why is this problem occurring? Most of the time is due to there is no budgeting made by consumer. Without budgeting, consumers will not know how much they spend as well as how much money they have. Therefore, they tend to spend more than their income. This is problems often happens on those credit card users whereby they will only make payment a payment after purchasing.

2. Do not have the habit of saving money

Most of the consumers do not have the habit of put a portion of money to their saving accounts. During inflation, all goods and services has become relatively expensive than before. Consumer need spend more money to buy same value of goods or services. Moreover, there is no saving in their bank account to meet the unexpected expenses and thus consumer will be faced with the problem of credit debt.

3. The used of credit cards

Another cause of credit debt is the increasing relies on credit card. Most consumers will have a wrong perception that they have enough money to make payment a month after purchasing goods and services. There is increased amount of consumer is preferred to purchase something by using credit card rather than paying cash. Although it is convenient but actually it is a way leading to high debt. Consumers have to pay for principle portion plus interest rate that is charged by bank. It is more expensive as compared to make cash payment.

4. Reduced in income

Due to economy downturn, consumers’ income has decreased significantly. Consumers often do not adjust their spending to match with the reduction in income. Without preparation of budget, consumers would not know exactly how much they have spent and thus overspending will be occurred.

5. Excessive Medical expenses

Medical expenses can not be avoided by almost every family. We often deal with problems when our family members have faced with illness or serious diseases. The medical bills are high and most of the time people tend to make payment by using credit card. If they are not able to pay if the amount is due then the debt will carry forward to the following month. Eventually, debt will be accumulated month by month.

Ways to prevent and control credit debt

1. Prepare your own budget

It is advisable to have monthly budget to prevent credit debt. Budget should be prepared based on your income. Consumer should control themselves to spend according to the budget. They should spend their money on necessary goods or services instead of spending on those unnecessary spending.

2. Self control and discipline

The most important element to solve credit debt is the consumer itself. They should
manage their money properly as well as make spending wisely. It is advisable to spend on necessity goods and services especially during economic downturn in order to avoid debt.

3. Avoid using credit card

It is recommended do not to rely on credit card as it will lead to creation of debt. Consumer should not use future money because we could not predict what will happen in the future. The used of debit card can be substitute of using credit card because you can only spend money that you are actually owned.

4. Keep your money in saving account

Consumer should save a portion of their money in their saving accounts. This is important to pay unexpected expenses or during financial problems. Holding cash is relatively important particularly during economic downturn in order to prevent incurring excessive debt .

References:

http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/5-simple-credit-card-debt-rules-1267.php

http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-We-Overspend-Our-Dollars&id=237361

http://www.3debtconsolidation.com/creditcardmistakes.html

Electronic Currency

Do you know what is money? Do you ever seen it before? Do you touch it before? I think everyone will answer "YES". Money basically in the form of physical notes and coins, and it involve in our daily transactions. However, money can be intangible nowadays because of the evolution of technology information.

Electronic currency is known as money that just transacted electronically by computer networks or internet. There is no physical asset for electronic currency. It is a system which allows to pay for goods and services by transmitting a number from one computer to another computer. Funds will be transfered from one party to another party, by using a strong encryption to prevent payment risk to the payer. Electronic Fund Transfer and direct deposits are some of the examples for electronic currency.

Electronic currency have been used widely in banking world for currencies depositing and online payment. It is extremely convenient via electronic currency where no any physical cash involved. There will be an account in the digital world, user have to verify the ownership of the account. After that, the user can withdrew money from the electronic account. The digital bank will send a seriel number like electronic coins to the user, which the bank will sign it by using encrypted keys. Users can use this electronic coins to purchase online goods.

Doing online purchasing by using electronic currency is more secured since it using a strong encryption code that can be said is impossible to break the code. Therefore, it become more and more popular in online world as the security and privacy is protected.

FIRSTGATE Click and Buy

ClickandBuy is one of the e-payment market through INTERNET. It makes the online payment easier by innovative e-billing system. It's also provide security to users when they are using online payment. It is leading in online payment world and provides e-payment support for more than 14,000 merchants in 26 countries, with 126 different currencies and 46 different payment methods.

Paystone

Paystone provide online payment services that is inexpensive and support small financial transaction. It provide a chance for small businesses or merchandise to generate profit more efficiently and easily. In addition, it also offer email funds transfer services which enable the account holders to transfer its fund to any email they want around the world.

Beenz.com & Flooz.com

Both of these two website developed in the early stage of online currency heat and enable users to earn online currency. Beenz.com with beenz currency, Flooz.com with flooz currency. This online currency is used to make online purchase, similar like using coupon to purchase item in real world. They have been supported by online merchant and people tends to use this kind of online currency to make payment. However, dot-com disaster happen and both of these two dot com had been shut down. The difference between these two dot com and e-payment nowadays is these two dot com ise using own kind of currency which might not be accepted by certain party. Once failure of these two dot com happen, the beenz and flooz currency become unusable and worthless.

Peppercoin
It is a system to process small payment(micropayment). Peppercoin.Inc is the company who has the idea of aggregrate transactions of all user, merchant and payment service provider and pick randomly selected small transactions and bill them in a lum sum amount of money. This can helps to save transaction per cost.

Review of " what sell best online"

Based on the post of “what Sell Best Online”, we can conclude that the numbers of e-tailing company are keeping on rising. The online transaction is very common in developed country such as US. In Malaysia e-tailing activities are still limited as most of the Malaysian still relies on traditional commerce. Generally, the online sales involve selling computer hardware and software, clothes, home furnishing, books and etc.

E-tailing is environmental friendly because it encourages paperless transaction, so that save the resources. At the same time, E-tailing is easy to be used for searching greater products information and selection to customers so that they can make comparison easily. Besides this, customers can also save their cost whereby they no need travel from shop to shop for product hunting. This is why people prefer to purchase items through e-tailing. According to the post, more and more people interested to purchase clothes through online may be because they can customize the clothes according to their preferences. If physically travel to the shop may be hard to get the design and size that they want. In the future, all of the items might be sold through e-tailing even stationeries. For example, customers might be able to customize the style of pencils. Therefore, the competition among E-tailing companies will become greater.

However, we also concern about the drawback of such E-tailing. When people all the time work with the computers and lazy to travel, it may lead to health problems. In today’s environment, a lot of people only focus on their job with computers and do not exercise. Furthermore, some computers will release greater radioactive, if people always exposed to it, cancer can be easily caused.

Review of " Online Brokerage Fraud-Millions of Dollar Loss"

Based on the post of Online Brokerage Fraud-Millions of Dollar Loss, obviously this is due to lack of internet security. E-Trade Financial and Ameritrade might already try hard to design and implement the internet security system such as firewall, anti-virus, encryption and etc. However, hackers will still find out the weaknesses of such internet security system and try to break down that system. The question is why the hacker able to hack into the company system even though the security system is very strong. We think such a criminal hacking might be directly or indirectly done by the people who are very clear with the company’s internet security system and its weaknesses. The hacker might be the staff of the company especially those who involve in designing the system. Therefore, inspection should be done on those people as well. Furthermore, IDs and passwords might be stolen by outsiders and lead to the fraud cases.

Usually, the motive of hacker is to gain unauthorized access to the database of the company to destroy the data, change the information or to corrupt the company’s computer system for their own interest. The real example is stated on the post whereby the system of E-Trade Financial and Ameritrade had been hacked and lead to millions of dollars losses.

Besides facing financial losses, company at the same time will lose customers’ confidents. Customers are always concern whether their private information is filed properly in the company database. If hackers can easily access to the database, customers might worry their confidential information will be stolen especially for online banking system. Hackers might hack into the account of customers and make unauthorized transfer of money to hackers account.

In order to minimize the chances of internet fraud, company should always renew its internet security systems and always change the IDs and passwords.

Phishing

Definition

Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire confidential information such as username, passwords and credit card detail by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Phishing is carried out by e-mail or instant messaging which the email request the users to update their personal information. Its' look are almost identical like legitimate but actually it is fake and set up to steal the user’s private information. Normally, phishing will appear in popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators such as PayPal, eBay, MSN, Yahoo, BestBuy, and America Online and so on.

A Few Examples of Phishing

eBay Phishing Example

Ebay/PayPal phishing is very common currently. A scammer will send out thousands or even millions of emails to his list. Once the end user click on the links in the e-mail ,it will link to a web site that designed like ebay. Next, the end user attempts to login his or her username and password to the scammer. Further, the scammer also e-mails to his list and claiming to be eBay or PayPal and request your username and password. The novice user may send those details back to the address and their account is compromised.To prevent this problems, the users do not reply or click any e-mail and links that claimed themselves as Ebay or Paypal.In fact, Ebay or PayPal website will never ask their users for personal information.

Bank Phishing Example

The scammer will send out phishing e-mails to bank users and claims that the recipients account has been suspended and in order to return their account to normal standing they need to verify some information. The users will clicks on the link and submit their information to scammer. Then, the scammer will use the information to operate the victims account.

To prevent the problem, the users do not click or reply any e-mail and link which it is claiming to be from bank. As this is a pretty common occurrence you should be able to just ignore it.

The other fraudulent ways is included the followings:

E-mail

Phone Phishing

Credit Card Phishing

Prevention of Phishing

There are few ways to solve the phishing such as do not reply or accept any unauthorized e-mail or messages. Besides, you can install the anti-virus to block any unauthorized mails. For more details about any software to solve phishing, you can refer to website like wikipedia, google, and so on.

Anti-Phishing Program

Article of Prevention Phishing

Type of Prevention Phishing

Prevention of Phishing

How to Safeguard Our Personal and Financial Data

Try to imagine this illustration: You love to do online shopping. Usually you will log in as member and use credit card for payment of the product. Recently you heard your friend said the website that you usually log in as member to do online shopping is being hacked by online hackers. You are so worried that your personal data would be stolen, especially your password that you use for logging in. This illustration fully described the importance of safeguarding for computer users nowadays. There are more and more people using computers to carry out their daily work, even companies make use of computers to do their ordinary business transactions. Therefore, online security is crucial in today's world to safeguard our personal and financial data.

There is some suggestions to protect your personal and financial data:

1. Install a firewall
Firewall referred to a system that is responsible to block unauthorized access and allowing authorized communication. Firewall act as a guard in front of our computer to block all unapproved users to log into our computer network.

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewall_(networking)



2. Password control
Password has to be created before access into any personal data to ensure no other one else can simply access to our data. However, the password has to be strong enough or complicated to avoid other from guessing your password correctly. Many of the website has enable users to log in using their password, however it seems not secured enough to safeguard our personal and financial data. This is just a preliminary stage in protecting our privacy. It is recommended to change password frequently as to prevent others from hacking into the data.



3. Encryption
Some information that are private and confidential should be encrypted. Encryption enable readable data to convert into unreadable characteristic so that others unable to read the data. It is a useful method to prevent others from stealing private data from the computer.



4. Do not access financial information publicly
Please avoid to access personal financial account when using public wireless or at public computer. Public wireless or computer not like our own personal computer, they are more easier to hacked by others.



5. Install antivirus or antispyware programs

This is the most common way to protect your data. Every personal computer should have one antivirus program to ensure clean file or information saved in computers. Norton, AVG or other antivirus sofware could help you to avoid viruses and attacked by intruders. In an addition, it is important to update your antivirus programs frequently.




6. Do not access to unknown site or download unknown file
It is essential to have knowledge that all unknown site or file might contained viruses. Therefore, please do not simply access to it as once you clicked on it, there will be a chance for the intruders. Besides, any pop-out that appeared on the screen should be ignored.

The Threat of online security: How Safety is our data?

The used of internet has become fundamental in our daily life. It has been widely used in different networks such as education, business and banking as well as government networks. However, organization continuously exposes to the threat of online security. The threat of online security that organizations face was different and it will lead to substantial financial losses for the organization.

Nowadays,people often face with problem that their personal data is being accessed by unauthorized user. Hence,now we have to know that there are two types of attacks which are called non technical and technical. The word non technical attack is defined as an attack that is a collection of techniques to manipulate someone to perform an action or revealing private information that compromise a network or computer. Social engineering is examples of non technical attack whereby the hacker make use of human weaknesses to influence people provide confidential information rather than invest their time to break the access control system. Phishing is an example of social engineering attack whereby email users will receive fraudulent email that requires he or she provide their password or any other private information to update their personal account data. In fact, it is a technique used by social engineer to private information.Those are examples of non technical attack which is one of the threat of online security which will harm personal confidential data.

Below is an example of fraudulent email:

On the other hand, technical attack is defined as attack that using software and system knowledge to gain access to private information. The most common types of technical attack include the virus, worm and Trojan Horse.

Virus is a program that attaches itself to a legitimate program to penetrate the operating system and destroy application program, data files and the operating system itself. Virus has the ability to spread throughout the host system and on the other systems before perpetrating its destructive acts. Personal computer always encounter with virus penetration. This is particularly when connecting in a network where the infected personal computer can upload the virus to the host system. Subsequently, the virus will spread throughout the operating system and to other user. Virus will be spreading via email attachment, downloading free program from the internet and so on.

Besides, Worm is a software program that hides into the computer memory and replicate itself into different area memory. Worms is different from Virus because it can be replicated systematically without transfer as part of host. Other than that , Trojan Horse is also an example of technical attack. It is a program that aims to obtain the IDs and passwords from private users. It able mimic normal log on procedures of the operating system. Trojan Horse will save a copy of those confidential data in a secret file when the users entering their IDs and password. Ultimately, Trojan Horse’s author can access to the system by using those IDs and password. Worm and Trojan horse are also another ways where confidential data will be hacked by the unauthorized user.

As a conclusion, there is substantial number of threat of online security and users’ data has become less safety as a result of advancement in technology. Therefore, proper safeguard like firewall and antivirus software should be used in order to encounter with the risk of online security.

References:

http://www.bsagovernment.com/downloads/MajorOnlineThreats.pdf

Identify and compare the revenue model: Google Vs Amazon.com Vs eBay

Google revenue model

More than 90% of Google yearly income is generated by advertising revenue model. Google revenue model consists of the Google AdWord, Pay per click Advertising, Google AdSense, Google Answer and Froogle.

(i)Google AdWord – Most percentage Google revenue is generated from here. It is a pay per click advertising program of google which is designed to allocate the advertisers to present advertisement to people. At the moments, people can view the related information that have been made by advertiser through the advertisement. In addition, you can easily let people know about your services and products when people visiting the web pages.


(ii) Pay per Click Advertising (PPC) – PPC enables an advertiser easily sign up and manage an account online. Beside, it is an online advertising payment model and the payment is counted based of the number of people clicking and looking your products and services.



(iii) Google AdSense – Website users can sign up this program to allow text, image, and video advertisements in their sites. Revenue is generated from per-click or per- thousand-ads-displayed basis and the ads are administered by Google.



(iv) Google Answers – It is an Internet search and research service offered for a fee by Google. Every question asked by customers, customers can offer the price for answer and researcher will answer them. The researcher was not the Google members. Prices for each question range $2 to $200. After the researcher answer the question, 25% of the payment will keep by Google and the less for the researcher.


(v) Froogle- It is one of the services in Google. It helps to get the products and services information online. Froogle is a price engine website launched by Google. Inc. It is different from the most normal price engine in which it is neither charges for any fee for listings, nor accept the payment for product show up. The company can submit their product information (via a “data feed”) and included on it. The product advertising will be displayed in Froogle in the form of an AdWords ad.




Amazon

Next to eBay, Amazon is the best online website for businesses. Amazon has “Earth’s biggest selection”, there are 16 million items has been sold on it website. It has added music, video, gifts, and greeting cards to the books it offers to 8.4 million customers. Beside, Amazon allows customers to submit reviews to the web page of each product and do rating on each product.

Other than that , Amazon generates revenue from Affiliate fees. Amazon was the first online businesses that set up an affiliate marketing program. Example of the affiliate marketing program is AStore. It allows users to create an online store in their site. The website owners will pick products from Amazon’s store and earn referral fees on the products purchased by their readers.

Amazon also generates revenue by sales revenue model and transaction fee revenue model. Amazon earns the revenue through the Amazon Marketplace by the sales. Amazon Marketplace allows buyer to buy a new or used items which sold directly by a sellers in the Amazon.com. Therefore, Amazon can charge a commission based on the sale price and transaction fee and a variable closing fee.








eBay is an online auction and shopping website which people having businesses buy and sell a broad variety goods and services worldwide. Nowadays, eBay has more than 2 million items for auction daily and 3.8 million registered members. EBay generates revenue from a number of fees such as insertion fees, promotional fees, and final value fees.

Insertion fees: When an item is published in eBay, this nonrefundable fee is charged.

Promotional fees: Fee that charged for additional listing options that help attract attention for an item such as highlighted or bold listings.

Final value fees: Commission that charged to the seller at the end of the auction.

In addition, people can bid their products and buy their products any place and anytime. Bidding on ebay’s auction-style listing is called proxy bidding. The winning bidder will pay the second-highest bid plus one bid increment amount, instead of simply the second-highest bid. However, since the bid increment amount is relatively insignificant compared to the bid size and they are not considered from a strategical standpoint. The highest amount who bid by bidders will become the winner in the auction.





Reference:
Different google, amazon and ebay

Google Revenue Model

ebay Vs Amazon

An Example of an E-commerce Failure and its Causes

Kozmo.com was established in 1997 by Joseph Park and Yong Kang in US. It is a grocery shop and with a mission that deliver product within an hour when customer need it. Kozmo.com offered four major product categories: entertainment, food, basics, and specialty. At first, delivery fees were free of charge and as a result that Kozmo was growing more popular followed by large business expansion, yet this free delivery service was actually caused Kozmo losing money in every single order. Kozmo expand quickly in year 2000 from six locations to 11 cities, included Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York, Los Angeles, Portland (Ore.), San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.. But, a dot.com crash happened and in year 2001, Kozmo.com announced to shut down its operation and lay off its 1100 employees. For more information please visit News.CNET.

Causes:

Free Delivery Services

Free delivery services contribute part of its failure as the costs of delivery were high. For example, it is too costly while the order is just a CD which has low profit margin. It caused the company to lost money in such a situation, maybe there is a profit, but it won’t be high.

Ambitious Expansion

Kozmo aimed to deliver product to customer within an hour when customer need it. As Kozmo expand its business in more and more cities, the employees became incapability to deliver product on time.

Slow Reaction

Kozmo react too slow when NASDAQ stock market had a sharp fall and dried up the public market. At that time, Kozmo seem not profitable enough and it didn’t change its business approach as quickly before the market condition change.

Shift of Target Market

They shift their target market from middle class college-students to upscale clients who would be able to afford more expensive product.

Withdrawn of Investors' Fund

The withdrawn of investors’ fund caused a merger with PDQuick, a Los Angeles company failed. If this merger would had happen, it gives Kozmo more resources to continue stay in operation.

References :

Jayson Blair(2001-04-13). "Behind Kozmo's Demise: Thin Profit Margins". Retrieved on 2009-06-15.

Wu, John C.(2001-11-01). "Anatomy of a Dot-Com". Retrieved on 2009-06-15.