Transactional E-commerce Site

The transactional site is a website that is popular for those who like to shop online. It is a website with an electronic storefront for a brick-and-mortar retailer or a catalog business. Besides that, it is also a manufacturer showroom for those who wish to sell their products to the public directly. This type of website has provided various types of services for them to compete in the markets such as allow the customers to search for, order, and pay for the products online. Some of these websites even offer the after-sales service to the customers. Among these sites, Amazon.com is the most famous and successful transactional site in the world.

In Malaysia, there are various types of local transactional e-commerce sites that are available to the public. The lelong.com.my is a local transactional e-commerce site that we would like to introduce this week. The lelong.com.my is a website that starts to operate at the end of 1998 and it is a website that provides online shopping and online auction services to all Malaysians. The mission of this website is “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 reasons for the success of lelong.com.my is the website will accept any types of products to sell or bid online whether there are used or new items. Moreover, their track record for selling items is extremely good with approximately 70% of all items posted for auction on the site are sold.

There are more and more local e-commerce transactional sites that can be found in the Internet. This is due to the increasing number of computer users, as well as wider coverage of broadband access and people are more willing to stay at home instead of going out shopping. This type of website is convenient and easy to use for the public. So, there will be increasing profitability and opportunities for these online transactional websites in future.

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

http://www.export.gov/sellingonline/typesofsites.asp

E-learning in Malaysian Universities: Its Pros and Cons from Students' Perspectives

E-learning, or electronic learning is a process that uses digital tools and electronic media like the Internet, CD-ROMs, Software Programs, video conferences and many more which the contents and instructions of the syllabus are transferred digitally. E-learning has been introduced in Malaysia since 1996, by our former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir, in align with the launching of the Multimedia Super Corridor and the Vision 2020. Now, almost all universities in Malaysia has implemented e-learning besides the formal, usual way of lectures and tutorials. Students can learn and grab their knowledge online, without even attending the classes. Lecturers and students interact with each other online, and the students can get their assignments done online.

What is so different of e-learning from the traditional learning process?

Traditional learning is merely going through books, papers, reading and writing but e-learning makes these processes more interesting by having a more attractive learning website and a 3-D based presentation. With these, I believe that learning is no more a boring task for most of the students.

University students found out that e-learning has a lot of benefits compared to traditional learning.

1. E-learning promotes Individualization—students can learn in their own pace and do not need to worry that they cannot follow up with the whole class. This cannot be done when lectures are carried on in lecture halls. In traditional lectures, the lecturers will need to complete the syllabus within the given time frame and this will be a disadvantage for students who are slower than others.

2. E-learning also helps to save costs—the learning process can be done online, thus help to save money on transport, accommodation fees. Students can just learn at home and stay at home. All they need is to have an Internet service. Besides, they can save time from traveling to the university too.

3. Improved access and flexibility—E-learning is available anytime, anywhere as long as internet services are available. Information can be transferred faster and accessible 24/7. Students will not need to worry on getting their notes late from their lecturers. All they need is to download the notes from the source provided.

4. Improved control and standardization—Besides flexibility, students and lecturers can have better control and standardization on the information shared. All the information will be shared online and the related students and lecturers are able to access it immediately. Students will not need to worry that they will get different information from others.

5. Encourage communication and collaboration—Learning online also improve students’ communicating skills. This will help students who tend to be passive or shy to voice out in class to participate actively in the virtual learning space. They can share their ideas for discussion online rather than keep quiet in class.

6. Demonstrate concepts that are difficult to convey in other medium—Sometimes, an idea can be conveyed more effectively using E-learning instead of using verbal explanations. For example, mind-maps or drawings are more effective to be presented online.

However, there are also certain drawbacks from e-Learning. When the internet connection is slow, students will be unable to download the notes they need immediately. Broadband or internet services are still unavailable in all areas today especially the rural areas. Students who cannot afford to have internet services will have no opportunity to enjoy e-Learning. The transfer of data may also be exposed to potential harms like viruses or hackers. Besides, students’ abilities to interact with people face-to-face will be discouraged.

Those students who are introvert may be more passive when they are facing with people if they rely too much on learning themselves, individually without mixing with other people. Besides, students need to be highly self-disciplined when learning by themselves online.

Although there are disadvantages from e-Learning, it is still a need in the booming electronic advancement today. If this e-Learning is carried out systematically, it is always an effective and efficient study medium. Students should utilize its benefits in order to achieve a more effective result from learning online. I believe our university is still developing and improving its e-learning facilities which will gradually be an essential part for our future education.

References:
1. Wong, D., (2006) Fulltime Students' and Working Adults' Perceptions of E-Learning in Malaysia, Asian Journal of Distance Education, Retrieved 20 June 2009 from http://www.AsianJDE.org

2. Puteh, M.,(2007) E-learning In Malaysian Public Universities:Case Studies of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Retrieved 20 June 2009 from eprints.utm.my/4505/

Corporate Blogging- A New Marketing Communication Tool for Companies

A corporate Blog is a blog that is published by an organization to achieve their goals and objectives. It is a new marketing communication tool for companies. All browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 allow readers to view their posts easily without actually visiting the blog. There are many different types of corporate blogs which can be classified into external or internal blogs. External blog allows employees, teams, spokespersons of the organization to share their opinion in corporate blogs. When a company launches a new product, the company will introduce their new product in the external blog. In short, external blog is a publicly available weblog whereas internal blog only allows the organization employees to view its contents. Employees can access the internal blog through the company's intranet. Internet blog is normally used in meetings and allow employees located at different locations to communicate.

Example of various types of corporate blogging

1. Company Blog

Top 5 company blogs

=Google

=Adobe

=Flickr

=Facebook

=Yahoo!Search

2. CEO Blog

Example

=Jonathan Schwartz's Blog

=Randy Tinseth's Blog

3. Industry Blog

Example

=Miller Brewing's Brew Blog


4. Department or product Blog

Example

=Google-Product Blogs

=Microsoft Community Blogs


5. Customer service Blog

Example

=My response to Steve Rubel

=ComcastCaves' response to Arrington and other Comcast users on Twitter


Advantages of corporate blogging

Employers or top managers can communicate or contact with their customers, suppliers, investors and employees directly and easily. It is easier to set up a company blog because it is user-friendly for employer and employees to understand the ways to use and update the corporate blog. Moreover, employees can share their opinion and ideas freely in the blog so that the employers will know what are their employees thinking and their job satisfaction. Thus, it enables companies to achieve their goals quickly. Also, it enables other people to give feedback to the company or leader’s progress and the company and leader can seek for improvement from there. As a result, companies will generate big benefits from it. For example, if the corporate blog has a positive effect and feedback, the company's reputation will increase. This will create a good image for the company. Lastly, employers can spread information quickly in the event of emergency. So, employees, customers, suppliers can know the new information or urgent information quickly.

Disadvantages of corporate blogging

Although corporate blogging has a lot of benefits, there are some disadvantages of corporate blogging. First, corporate blogging is time-consuming for companies to maintain. It needs to take several times and energy to keep new information updated regularly. If companies use too much of time in maintaining their blog, it may lead to increased costs rather than benefits. In addition, corporate blogs require good written communication skills to produce a good post. However, some employees do not have such skills to post. Also, there are many cases of workers being fired because of the opinion they wrote on the blog. This is because employees can freely give feedback on the blog; which is a high probability that the employees will be fired if the employers are unhappy with what they wrote. Lastly, everyone can give feedback or comment on corporate blog, so many stakeholders and employees do not view corporate blogging as a credible source. They may trust more on the announcement given in meetings.

Review (Legal) : Rules on Internet Cafe Soon

Teenagers love to spend their time at the internet café or cybercafés after school or sometimes until midnight. This issue has become a potential problem in Malaysia. Internet café or cybercafé is a place where one can use a computer with internet access by paying a fee per hour or minute or pay unmetered access with a pass for a day or month.

According to the Deputy Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Hamzah Zainuddin, there will be some new guidelines to be enforced soon on internet and cyber cafes in order to control these businesses. Among the new guidelines are all cyber café had to closed by midnight daily and they must be located at least 200 meters away from secondary and primary schools. Besides this, it requires teenagers or children aged 12 and below should go to the cyber cafe accompanied by their parents or guardians and they are only allowed to stay until 10.00 pm.

Hamzah also further explain that cyber cafes were also banned from other co-business activities including having games, gambling, pornography, music, and publications with negative elements. Cigarettes and alcohol also cannot be sold or consumed in the cyber café because it is not good for health.

Furthermore, the cyber cafés are only allowed to operate from the ground floor of the premises and are banned from using tinted glasses in their premises. On the other hand, there must be a book log to record the entry and departure time of the patrons.

With the implementation of the new cyber rules, teenagers will not be able to linger at the cyber cafes freely anymore. The students can concentrate more on their studies and parents can keep an eye on their children so that they will not be influenced by negative elements available from the internet. Potential criminals like gangsterism can be reduced if the time spent on the cyber cafe among teenagers can be reduced. In our opinion, these new rules should be carried out as soon as possible with proper enforcement by the Government and cooperation from the public. With this, the problems arised from cyber cafes can be reduced and solved in the long term.

References
-http://www.china.org.cn/English/BAT/48865.html
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_cafe
-http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/Legal

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

In those days, when you or your parents want to pay bills, pay income taxes, apply for something from the government, you will say it is troublesome. Why will you say so? You need to queue, purchase the form, waited for some time, in terms of hours or days or months to get things done. But today, things have changed. We do not need to travel and waste our time and energy for doing these tasks anymore. Thanks to E-Government that has been implemented since the late 1990s.

Electronic government or e-government is referred to the use of information and communication technologies that provides and improves government services, transactions and interactions with citizens, businesses and other arms of the government. It is implemented since the initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) by the government of Malaysia. E-government is one of the flagship applications from the MSC project. The objectives are to jump start and accelerate the growth of MSC, enhance national competitiveness to creation of high value jobs and export growth, to help reduce digital divide and to make MSC a regional hub and bed. The implementation of e-government services would bring benefits to public administration and the Malaysian community.

These are the e-government main projects:
1. Generic Office Environment (GOE) - The objective is to introduce a fully integrated, distributed and scalable office environment that leverages use of multimedia technology.
2. Electronic Procurement (ep) - The aims is to re-engineer, automate, and transform current procurement system.
3. Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS) - It provides a single interface for government employees to perform human resource function effectively and efficiently.
4. Project Monitoring System (PMS) - It is designed to provide a mechanism for monitoring the implementation of government project.
5. Electronic Labor Exchange (ELX) - It improves the mobilization of human resources.
6. E-syariah – It is implemented to focus the improvment of quality or services in syariah courts.
7. Electronic Services Delivery (e Services) – It allows citizens of Malaysia to engage in transactions with government and utilities payments such as telephone and electricity bills.

The current applications of e-government in Malaysia are
-E-Filling
-Renew Driving License online
-E-Judiciary
-E-Perolehan.
-E-Dafter

However, there are some barriers which could affect Malaysia’s government to implement these policies. First are Legislative and Regulatory Barriers. In order for e-government services to gain widespread acceptance, there must have the same standing as the equivalent paper processes and ensuring the privacy and security before advancing the online e-government services. So, it faces confusion over what exactly should be enplaced for good governance of the e-government services.

Besides this, there will also be budgetary framework problem because some government departments does not recognize ICT expenditure as a potential future investment. It is an important issue that government must realize the potential benefits of adopting e-government services to finance government services and shared infrastructure. The budgetary regulations should facilitate coordinated bids for new funds and the pooling of funds. Furthermore, technology changes also are one of the problems. Since technology moves rapidly, it is very difficult to anticipate the future impact in details.

The e-government citizen’s adoption strategies can be increased on its awareness through TV and radio advertisements and organizing workshops at shopping mails. On the other hand, citizens should be encouraged to show higher levels of satisfaction with the online service provided by the government. If the citizens felt unsatisfied with the services, they can give any suggestions and comments to the e-government websites. Moreover, providing the website with multiple language versions is also a helpful tool for implementing e-Government. For example, if some users lack of English language abilities, they can choose alternative languages like Chinese or Malay language to use the e-government services. Besides this, e-government also provides consultation services on how to use these services and the procedures needed to access the e-government services.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-government
http://www.intanbk.intan.my/psimr/articles/Article1%20-%20Full.pdf
http://publications.ksu.edu.sa/Conferences/eGovernment%20Conference/E19.pdf
http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/e-Government