Corporate Blogging:A new marketig communication tool for the companies

Nowadays, corporate blogging is very famous and common. Many company are using corporate blog as a communication tool and marketing strategies for the company. Corporate blogging use by the company to promoting and marketing their product, improving and building corporate image and other activtities.Participating in a blogging world gives companies a competitive edge and differenitiate it from competitors.

The corporate blogs, most can be categorized into internal blogs or external blogs.

Internal Blogs

Internal blogs,is a weblog that any employee can view and generally can access through corporation's Intranet. Many blogs are also communal,allowing anyone to post to them.

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. The corporate blog 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.

On the other hand, the blogs are powerful tools of promoting business, it can help in interacting with the customers and display their feedback. Hence, the company can respond and react to their feedback quickly. When the other people view the comments of testimonials made by customers, they will aware about the company product. In addition, corporate blogging has became an advertising or marketing strategy because it provide a lot of information about the products and company. The customers can access to the blog anytime and at anywhere, and very convenience to them.

Corporate blogs have gain popularity globally.Acoording to market research done in the first half of 2006, indicated that 34% of large companies had established weblogs. Another 35% planned to do so by the end of 2006, thus bringing the total to nearly 70%.

There are some examples of corporate blogs that done successfully and have a very high numbersof suscribers. The official Google Blog is currently in the Technorati top 50 listing among all blogs worldwide.

Although there are many advantages of set up corporate blogs, there are also some disadvantages of create corporate blogs.

Pros of Corporate Blogs:

• As a competitive advantage for the company.
• Provide good customer service.
• Help to enhance corporate image.

Cons of Corporate Blogs:

• Time consuming to maintain.
• Low reliability because everyone can post their comments and opinions.

Electronic currency

Electronic Money (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. Typically, this involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value systems. Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and direct deposit are examples of electronic money. Also, it is a collective term for financial cryptography and technologies enabling it.Electronic money also encompasses payment systems that are analogous to traditional credit cards and checks. Here, cryptography protects conventional transaction data such as an account number and amount; a digital signature can replace a handwritten signature or a credit-card authorization, and public-key encryption can provide confidentiality.

ClickandBuy

ClickandBuy is one of the leading payment systems on the internet. More than 14,000 merchants benefit from this complete service in 26 countries, which includes 126 different currencies and 46 different payment methods. ClickandBuy is used by Apple iTunes, Skype, msn, T-Online, Electronic Arts, Meetic, Playboy, SanDisk, Yamaha, UNICEF and many more.

Payloadz

Payloadz offers secure digital goods e-commerce service for anyone who sell downloadable goods online. It provides a service to sell downloadable items such as:
Software, eBooks, music, movies, digital art, manuals, articles, certificates, forms, files, and anything else that can be downloaded.
Paystone Technologies Corporation is a private Internet payment and money transfer company dedicated to providing secure, easy and real time Internet transactions. It is founded in year 2001; Paystone has operations in the United States, Canada and the Philippines with International cash out capabilities in many other countries.

Paystone

Paystone provides an inexpensive online payment method without the risk of chargeback from fraudulent credit card use. Paystone can handle small financial transactions which we called micropayments as low as $0.25. The ability to process micropayments opens a whole new world for entrepreneurs of all sizes. Nowadays, a small business or an individual has a chance to generate revenue from their website quickly, easily and inexpensively. This makes a whole new range of content available to personal account holders. The large online merchant can also realize the full benefits of the Paystone in order to expand and increase the profitability of their business.

Digicash

Digicash’s mission is to create a new personalized dimension to the shopping experience. It transform online incentives into powerful new tools, establishing a strong, high-value connection between consumers and ecommerce companies. The Digicash Wallet, gives merchants a revolutionary new approach for initiating real-time, value-creating coupons and promotions to increase sales, margins, and customer loyalty.Consumers are embracing the Digicash Wallet because it’s fun, easy, convenient and personalized to their shopping needs. Capture the benefit of rising coupon usage without sacrificing profits.

Peppercoin

Peppercoin is a cryptographic system for processing micropayments. Peppercoin Inc. was a company that offers services based on the peppercoin method.
The peppercoin system was developed by Silvio Micali and Ron Rivest and first presented at the RSA Conference in 2002 (although it had not yet been named.) The core idea is to bill one randomly selected transaction a lump sum of money rather than bill each transaction a small amount. It uses "universal aggregation", which means that it aggregates transactions over users, merchants as well as payment service providers. The random selection is cryptographically secure -- it cannot be influenced by any of the parties. It is claimed to reduce the transaction cost per dollar from 27 cents to "well below 10 cents."
Peppercoin, Inc. was a privately held company founded in late 2001 by Micali and Rivest based in Waltham, MA. It has secured about $15M in venture capital in two rounds of funding.Its services have seen modest adoption.Peppercoin collects 5-9% of transaction cost from the merchant.Peppercoin, Inc. was bought out in 2007 by Chockstone for an undisclosed amount.

Mobile payment systems in Malaysia: Its potentials and consumer adoption strategies

Malaysians now can make a wide range of purchase without cash, credit card and cheque.




Hong Leong bank Team Up with the Mobile Money to create Innovation to payment industry


Where the consumer required a mobile phone and can make any purchase in any where any time , whether in car, office and home.


Hong Leong Bank will team up with local Mobile Money international to introduce this innovative mobile payment which allow the consumer tp pay goods and services via SMS.



Maxis and MayBank testing Mobile phone payment


Maxis Communication Berhad is currently trialling a mobile phone multi payment service incorporating credit card and prepaid transit payments with maybank, Visa International and Tounch n Go.

Maxis touch n pay used Near field Communication (NFC) technology with short range wireless connectivity in mobile phone and this mobile phone current available om Nokia 6131 NFC phones.

• Low transaction and maintance costs


• Low startup or sign up fees


• No minumum monthly transaction, No rental fees


• No merchants account required
  
• Selling and buying to anyone , anywhere, & anytime


• Get paid fast and faster turnover in T= 2 days


• Flexible method to Request for Payment:Fixed line, SmS
  
• Good audit trail and secure tivketing


• Marketing & point system opportunity using mobile payment

____________________v_____________________

Benefit of Mobile PHONE

references : http://www.neowave.com.my/0doc/mobilemoneypaymentsystem.html

The Application of Pre-paid Cash Card For Consumers

Nowadays, there are many types of prepaid cash cards had been offered to the consumers. One of the most successful pre-paid cash card is the Touch 'n Go card. It can be considered as a electronic purse that can be used at all highways in Malaysia, major public transports in Klang Valley, selected parking sites and Bukit Merah Lake Town resort. The card looks similar to a credit card and users can use it as long as it is pre-loaded with electronic cash. Since the card is using the contactless smartcard technology so it can enhances the speed of paying the transactions. The users no need to wait in queue at the cash lane to complete the transaction.



Touch 'n Go Sdn Bhd (formerly known as Rangkaian Segar Sdn Bhd), the operator of this Electronic Payment System has offered several range of Touch 'n Go cards to suit different market needs. Fleet Xs is specially designed to meet the demanding needs of today's business. it is a post-paid corporate Touch 'n Go card that is preloaded with electronic cash. It can only be used at several highways. Fleet Xs require an annual fee of RM30 per card and minimum ten cards per application. Each Fleet Xs is individualised to indicate optional details such as driver's name, company names, vehicles classifications and registration number. Biz Xs is a upgrade version of Fleet Xs which similar to it but it have additional function from the Fleet Xs which it can be used at the selected parking lots at business and shopping complexes that are equipped with Touch 'n Go parking system.

Octopus card was launched in Hong Kong in September, 1997. It is a rechargeable contactless stored value smart card. It is widely used in payment system for transportation, supermarket, fast food restaurant, car parks and other point of sales. There are two types of Octopus which are Sold Octopus and On-Loan Octopus. Sold Octopus are available in a range of collectible designs and are ideal as souvenier. While On-Loan Octopus have 4 categories such as child, adult, elder and personalised.


Other than making payment by using the Octopus card, the users can also used the card as the access card to gain access into a residential area or a building. As each Octopus has a unique ID number, cardholders only need to register their Octopus at the management office, and the ID will stored in the central security system. Many residential estates and commercial offices have adopted Octopus as a security access system, providing added convenience for over 100,000 residents and employees. furthermore, Octopus has been introduced into the school environment with the ultimate aim of making school life easier. Students can now use Octopus to buy foods, make miscellaneous school payments library loan and etc.

EAZYCARD, is the first 'touch and go' IC card for mass transport in Taiwan. Transaction on EAZYCARD are executed by wireless signal transmission through memory IC chips and induction circuits implanted onto the card. Passengers no longer need carrying coins or repetitive ticket purchases. The current scope of applications of EAZYCARD system is on public transport, transport-related services, access control and school campus. It, thus, ehances citizens' convenience in their daily life.

ItzCash card is India's first multi purpose prepaid card. It is a smart option for all, and the safest online and on-mobile transaction instrument that allows you to be in control on your spent. It facilitates online and on-mobile payment for a host of services. ItzCash enables users to perform a variety of transaction like shopping, travel booking, utility bill payment, donation and charity and etc.

Review on e-Tailing post

After reviewed the posts on the e-commerze blog i found that e-Tailing actually can be used by many industries and its provide convenience for the company and the users. For example, the ecommerce king, Amazon.com had move a step further in their online retailing by launching the text-message shopping (SMS Shopping) on 1st April 2008 which named TextBuyIt. Through this application, customer can buy the things they desired without using the computer. Customer just need to send the name of the product with its description or ID to 262966 using SMS. The confirmation will sent trough text messages and e-mail.

Other than purchasing items online, Opentable.com which dominat service is manage the reservation and improve customer services for over 7000 high-end restaurants which mostly located in New York and San Francisco. With this, reservation become very convenience for customers because it can be conducted on the non business hour beside it was being free. it also provide one click cancellation of the reservation.

The e-Tailing in Malaysia such as the Malayan Banking Berhad (Maybank) was the first local bank in Malaysia that introduce online banking. It has 3.6 million registered users of which 830,000 were active user. It also offered the online stock trading at its Maybank2U internet portal. This online trading portal was launched in 2000 has about 10,000 users. Customer who invest through can save up to 63% on their trading fees which enable them to breakeven their investment faster.

Furthermore, Malaysia's government also encourage the agriculture and handicraft industry to venture into online business to market their products and at the same time helps the industries become more competitive. For example, www.right.sarawak.gov.my/Rightmart which set up by the Sarawak Craft Council for the handicraft player to showcase their products and designs online. beside that, the fisherman in Tanjung Dawai also gone the internet way and auctioning their catches via e-mail. It was open to the bidders from all over the world to place their bids from 3pm to 7pm malaysian time everyday. This system was introduced in April with the help of the Malaysia Fisheries Development Board. This system benefited the fisherman as they could get the best deal through the auction.

Since e-Tailing can provide convenience for us but it also have a weak side on some industries. For example, Dell is famous for selling it PC and Laptop directly to their customer through the direct sales online which proved to be very successful business model. But recently, Dell had opened up their retail store in several countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and etc. This maybe because of the growth of PC sales had slowed down.

Credit Card Debt: The Causes and Prevention

What is credit card? Credit card is a card that provides holder with credit to make purchases up top a limit fixed by card issuer( Eg: Visa and Master card).I believe this word or term is very common to all to all of us. Do you have credit card debt? This is something that can very easy get out of hand and credit card reduction should be something that you are always try to accomplish. There are some credit card causes and several suggested ways to prevent you overspend and get your debt under control:

Causes of Credit Card Debt:

1)Poor finance management: This is the most common reason why many people have accumulated credit card debt. This is because people are unaware to conduct a monthly spending plan and do not keep track of their monthly bills. Thus, they will not realize that they overspend snd lead to a rising in debt.

2) Unexpected unemployment and salary deduction: Due to the economy crisis and financial hit that happend around the world, many people are unemployed due to organizational downsizing. Moreover,some of the company have to deduct the employees salary to decrase the organization expenses. Households are forced to use the credit card for groceries, utilities and other expenses purpose to maintain their current lifestyle and some of them can't find the job in short period. Thus, this may cause rise in debt.

3) Gambling: Nowadays, gambling has become an entertainment activites in our daily life. It is hard to stop when it becomes addictive. Thus it will surely lead to a finacial disaster if boorowing money through creditcard for gambling.

4)Habit of purchasing branded goods: Some people are like to purchase the branded goods because they think that the branded goods will represent richness and status. Generally,most of the branded goods are very costly or expensive. Hence, it will lead to overspend.

Ways to Prevent Credit Card Debt:

1) Have a saving plan: This is key to help you to protect yourself from getting into debt. It is important to set a certain amount each month into a saving account. It can just be for general savings or you could set a goal to save up for a big purchase. Saving with a goal in mind motivates many people to stick to their saving plan. Then, at the end you will be able to purchase the desired object without going into debt.

2) Making a budget: You have to create a clear budget and stick on it that includes monthly bills, foods, clothes, entertainment and miscellaneous expenses will prevent from overspending and fall under deeper debt load.

3) 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. Hence, self control and discipline to keep these cards in wallet and would not overspend. Prevention is aware of the causes of credit card debt and start to spend less in order to stay with well in financial situation.

How to safeguard our personal and financial data

The topic we would like to discuss today is how to safeguard our personal and financial data?Nowadays, due to the technology advancement many people like to shopping and purchasing online,doing payment through e-banking and saving personal data in blog and website. They like to doing all the activities through online because it is convenient and time-saving. However, there will be some diadvantages of doing the transaction online such as the important or confidential information will be steal and unauthorized access by the other party. Therefore, we will suggest some ways to safeguard our personal and finacial data.

Ways to Safeguard our Personal and Financial Data:

1.Always using antivirus and antispyware software to protect your computer system-The users can using the antivirus software such as AVG and Avira antivirus software to scan and prevent,detect and remove malware, including Trojan horse,worm and virus

2.Create strong passwords- Do not create passwords that are weak or easy to guess such as your birthday or handphone numbers as passwords. You can create password that contain 12 characters that is hard to guess.

3.Do not disclose or reveal any personal or financial data to anyone- Avoid logging to your financial account in the public place such as Internet Cafe of coffeeshop that offer wireless because maybe the firewall do not strong enough.

4.Encrypt your important and sensitive files- Encryption is a process of scrambling a message or file in a way that difficuly for the unauthorized person to unscramble or read it.

5.Avoid open unknown or mystery files- Never open an attachment or click on a link that sent to us by unknown party. These attachments can contain virus that harmful to your computer system.