A Discussion on E-learning offered in Malaysia Universities: Pros and Cons from the Student Perspective

Electronic learning (or E-Learning or eLearning) is a term for all types of technology-enhanced learning (TEL), where technology is used to support the learning process. Often the medium of instruction is through computer technology, particularly involving digital technologies. E-learning has been defined as "pedagogy empowered by digital technology". In some instances, no face- to- face interaction takes place. E-learning is used interchangeably in a wide variety of contexts. In companies, it refers to the strategies that use the company network to deliver training courses to employees. Lately in most Universities, e-learning is used to define a specific mode to attend a course or programmes of study where the students rarely, if ever, attend face-to-face for on-campus access to educational facilities, because they study online. On student perspective, there some pros and cons on e-learning program:

Pros:

• Students can study anywhere they have access to a computer and Internet connection
• Class work can be scheduled around work and family
• Learners can test out or skim over materials already mastered and concentrate efforts in mastering areas containing new information and/or skills
• eLearning can accommodate different learning styles and facilitate learning through a variety of activities
• Self-paced learning modules allow students to work at their own pace
• Students have the option to select learning materials that meets their level of knowledge and interest
• Uniform standards maintained
• Consistent content delivery
• Fewer errors, safer environment
• Students develop knowledge of the Internet and computers skills that will help them throughout their lives and careers

Cons:

• Learners with low motivation or bad study habits may fall behind
• Without the routine structures of a traditional class, students may get lost or confused about course activities and deadlines
• Students may feel isolated from the instructor and classmates
• Instructor may not always be available when students are studying or need help
• Slow Internet connections or older computers may make accessing course materials frustrating
• Managing computer files and online learning software can sometimes seem complex for students with beginner-level computer skills

Review a Local, Transactional, E-commerce Site

There are many local e-commerce website in Malaysia, i had chosen one lucky website which is http://business.com.my/. This is a home of online business in Malaysia and the place for doing business on the web. Business.Com.My is Malaysia's leading ecommerce, business process management services provider for the Internet & eBusiness Industry company, operating one of the world's largest online e-marketplaces for both domestic Malaysia and international trade.

They have engineered innovative eBusiness Frameworks to speed the integration of user supply and demand chains. Customers, suppliers, and distributors can collaborate seamlessly in e-Marketplace net exchanges. Business.Com.My can be translated into multiple languages such as english, chinese, Japanese, bahasa malaysia version and so on. Business.Com.My built parallel to accelerate the Malaysia government objectives. Their company has been awarded MSC Status by the Malaysian government, and officially appointed by Malaysia Network Information Centre. They are also registered with Malaysia Ministry of Finance.

Following are part of the e-commerce related clusters that connect a strong online community of millions of consumers and businesses from Malaysia, and around the world.

First is Business.Com.My eTrade which has created an online business marketplace/trading community, primarily serving Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMB's) to match buyers and sellers in both Malaysia domestic and international markets. From initial sourcing of products right through to an ecommerce transaction, eTrade caters to all procurement needs in one place. Whether you are a buyer or a seller, eTrade can help you find these partners and establish successful trading relationships for today and tomorrow.

Further more, Business.com.My eStore which is a consumers ecommerce market, is to help consumers in both Malaysia domestic and international use the power of their eStore platform to find, compare and buy anything through our pool of networked merchants from Malaysia. For consumers, they have the Malaysia largest product catalogs. With a detailed classification structure and comprehensive listing enable consumers searching the necessary products information to make purchase decisions in one easy to navigate place. Consumers can find the right product at the right price and from the right merchant with just a few clicks. For merchants, eStore provides a medium for them to post the products they're selling and help them find potential consumers. Support Malaysia Made Products

Lastly what I want to intro is Business.Com.My eDirectory which is a user friendly source of Malaysia online business directory information, business yellow pages that allows people to save time by finding what they need faster. With a detailed classification structure and comprehensive listing of companies, They make your business easier to find for consumers that are ready to buy. A eDirectory Profile contains detailed searchable business information. By submitting your Profile information, you are making it easier for consumers that search by keywords to find your business. Business.Com.My edirectory is available in 3 format, which are web, printed and CD. These will be publish and distribute nationwide.

Above that is just part of the ecommerce that related to Business.com.my. There is still a few others. In conclusion ,Business.com.my are look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship with user business, with many new customers finding through Business.com.my and their partner directories. Beside they also committed to deliver top quality service and leading edge technology to everyone.

The application of Pre-Paid Cash Card for Consumers

Prepaid cash card looks like credit and debits cards and they offer the same ability to purchase goods and services but you can only spend the balance that you have preloaded onto the card. That’s mean there is no risk of running into debts as it has no credit or overdraft facility. That’s the difference between prepaid cash card and credit or debit cards.

A Pin number will be given to consumers when purchased and once the money has been credited, it can be used as a credit or debit card. Money can be loaded onto a prepaid card by cash at bank, post office, at Payzone or Paypoint terminals or via a bank transfer. However, not all prepaid providers offer all of these loading options, so consumers need to bear this in mind when comparing deals as some are more flexible than others.

By using prepaid cash card, there are a lot of advantages. The main advantages of prepaid cards include:

· Availability - there are no credit checks, which means you can get a card without worrying about your credit history. All prepaid card providers will carry out an identity check to confirm you are who you say you are.

· Control - prepaid cards are an ideal way to budget for yourself or help to manage your children's spending. Like a credit card you get a full breakdown of spending on the card so you can see what has been purchased, who from and when.

· No debt risk - with a prepaid card there is no chance of spending too much as you are limited to the amount you put on your card.

· The card for travel – prepaid cards are a good option if you are going overseas. They are popular with students heading off on gap years and children who go abroad on school trips as parents can load them up here in the UK. However, the benefits are not restricted solely to young travellers - any holidaymaker can take advantage: prepaid cards offer a good alternative to travellers' cheques.

Phishing: Examples and It's Prevention Methods

Phishing
What do you all know about phishing? Let me explain to you all what actually phishing is and actually happen around us. Phishing is intentional acquiring of personal and sensitive information from the victim by masquerading as a business or individual.

Here is some example how fishing is happen......

Email phishing
The phisher will send email to direct user to a web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. Actually, the web site is a fake, just to steal the personal information from the victim.

Bank phishing
Bank Phishing scam attempts are very very common. Scammer will sends out millions of phishing emails. Then , the email claims that the recipients account has been suspended, and that in order to return their account to normal standing they need to verify some information. The user clicks on a link and submits their user to the scammer. The scammer then can break into the users account.

How to prevent?
Just ignore any link that claiming to be from the bank. If still concerned or see strange activity with your bank account then please contact your bank by phone to make sure it before make any action on the mail.


Ebay phishing
The scammer sends out thousands or even millions of emails to his email list claiming to be Ebay or PayPal and request your username and password. From the picture below, as soon as you clicked on “respond”, you were directed to an exact clone of eBay and your personal information was stolen.

How to prevent?
When receive this kind of messege do not give any respond or reply or click any link claiming to be from ebay or paypal. Just delete this kind of messages because eBay/PayPal will never ask their users for personal information.

Video style

A review on a post on Internet Security from My E-commerce blog: New Spamming Tactics

New Spamming Tactics

Spamming is the flooding of electronic mail systems with “junk e-mail” or known as unsolicited bulk messages sent through the electronic messaging systems. E-mail spam is the widely recognized form of spam and others types of spam are instant messaging spam, newsgroup spam, search engine spam, spam in blogs, mobile phone messaging spam and Internet forum spam.However, the spammers now are coming out new tactics to outsmart the anti-spam software which can helps to reduce the influx of the unsolicited e-mails tremendously. These new tactics are PDF Spam, Piggyback Spam and Greeting Card Spam.

PDF Spam
E-mail message containing a subject line and PDF file attached. The receiver of the PDF spam will curious to know what the content of the file and will open and read it. The reason the spammers using PDF spam because most spam filters are unable to screen the contents of a PDF attachment.

Piggyback Spam
It is a highly graphical e-mail messages that look like they come from large retailers. The message will ask you to click on a link when you cannot view or open the message. On the other hand, some tactics used is to include a few links in the message that allow you to ask the company to stop sending mail to you, register for access to some site or contact customer services. These links may lead to a download file which in turn may install malware and spyware. These files may also send out spam from the receiver computers.

Greeting Card Spam
Greeting card spam is the e-mail messages devised to look like greeting cards but it may contain dangerous virus. In this spam, the same concept which is being applied as the traditional e-greeting card systems which ask the recipient have to click on the link to view the full-blown greeting card online. However, once you click the link and it is most likely to download a virus

Corporate Blogging: A New Marketing Communication Tool For Companies

Corporate blog actually is published by an organization to reach its organizational goals. When using corporate blog, the posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. When talking about blog, we cant runaway from the browser. All the major browsers such as Firefox, Opera, Safari and also Internet explorer already can support RSS technology which can enables readers to easily read recent posts without actually visiting the blogs. There are 2 main categories of blog which are internal and external blog.

Generally, internal blog accessed through the corporation's Intranet, is a weblog that any employee can view. It is very useful when people involved in different location or having conflict 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.

An external blog is a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. It often tries to accomplish similar goals as press releases do but is treated more informally than traditional press releases. Besides that, it is also often used to explain new products and services or react on public criticism on certain issues. The nature of the external corporate blogs is biased, though they can also offer a more honest and direct view than traditional communication channels.

The business blog can provide additional value by adding a level of credibility that is often unobtainable from a standard corporate site. In addition, it 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.

Marketers might expect to have influencers among the audience of an external blog. They will like asking them for feedback on exclusive previews, product testing, marketing plans, customer services audits and etc.

Some of the examples are:

http://www.crmcdonalds.com/publish/csr/home/_blog.html


http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/




http://1000words.kodak.com/

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 , enabling the government to become more responsive to the needs of its citizens.The 7 pilot projects of the Electronic Government Flagship Application are as follows:

1. Project Monitoring System (SPP II)
2. Human Resource Management
Information 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 (http://www.gov.my/) acts as the one-stop source of Malaysian government information and services for the citizens.

The recent survey about e-government adoption in Malaysia, which was done by market information group TNS, indicated that the e-government use is growing but at a slow pace. As shown in the study, about 15% of Malaysians have used the internet to access online government services in year 2003 compared to 12% in year 2002. In the survey, Malaysia’s ranking is 25th out of 32 countries in terms of e-government usage growth. The Malaysians are also concerned about the security of doing transactions over the Internet and this resulted in low usage of e-government services. As far as the age group is concerned, the younger Malaysians who are under 34 are the primary users of e-government services. Also noted in the survey, households with high incomes and higher levels of education actively use the e-government services.

The implementation of e-government services will bring benefits to the public, businesses and the government itself. As for the public, saving time and money are the primary reasons to use the e-government implementation, the governments should market their offers, improve citizen’s awareness of the benefits and increase take-up of online services.However, implementing a successful e-government project is not without any barriers during the process. Hence, adopting good strategies are crucial in order to overcome these barriers.

The government should increase the awareness and gain more attention from citizens in the existing of their services provided in e-Government. Then, E-Government adoption requires that citizens show higher levels of satisfaction and security with the online service provided by the government. A higher level of customer satisfaction will increase the rate of e-Government adoption. Citizen adoption strategies citizens are comfortable of the protected privacy and confidentiality of the user's information. Moreover, the service quality should be competitive with the other developed country in terms of speed, problem serving approach, and ease of use of the website. This is important as it provide and encourage long-term users to use the website frequently and cut-off paper work when the payment process can be made through online.

Lastly, the government should do more advertising through radio and tv, and organising workshop in a strategic location in order to create awareness and convenience for problem solving as they are full-focus in providing the best services to its citizens.