The application of pre-paid cash card for consumers

1. Touch-n-Go
Touch ‘n Go (TNG) card is a multipurpose pre-paid card which can be used in public transportation around Selangor and all highway in Malaysia. However, applications of Touch-n-Go are expended toward the retail purchases. Such as fast food industry and parking fees. Recently, TNG facilities at both the KL International Airport (KLIA) and Low-Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) since February this year. Consumer just load in money and use it to pay the fee, and prepaid card not like credit card is using the future money. It is very convenience to us.

2. Octopus

Octopus is one of the most successful " prepaid card" system. It is started from a transit payment system, and it has become a widely used electronic cash system. In Hong Kong, most of the people are using Octopus pre-paid card in different services including public transportation services, apparel stores, bakeries, car parks, cinemas, convenience stores, fast food chains, household stores, leisure facilities, personal care stores, photo finishing stores, photocopiers, supermarkets, and vending machines. From year 2006, ShenZhen and Macau also can use Octopus card.

3. Ezlink
Same as Touch-n-Go and Octopus, Ezlink is pre-paid card in Singapore. It can be used in different sector service including food & beverage, convenience shops, gaming, government service, health, shopping & retail, tertiary institutions, schools, private bus service and so on.




4. Oyster Card
Oyster card is known as " Pay as you go" cards. It is fully valid on London transport services. Started from 2007, Oyster card also can be used to purchase goods and services.

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Not only had these four prepaid card, others country also got prepaid card distributed. For example, Taiwan got EasyCard, Australia got SmartRider, Tcard, and myki.These four prepaid card got similiar features is to link to the public transport system. Besides that, we need to keep it safety. This is because prepaid not like credit card or debit card need to sign the receipt, so in order to protect ourselves' money, we need to be careful at all.

Review on a post from My E-commerce Blog - Touch n Go Card

There is a good news for all Touch n Go cardholders, we can use Touch n Go card to buy fast food now! From: My E-commerce Blog

Most of the residents in Kuala Lumpur have their Touch n Go card. As we know, Kuala Lumpur is a big city of Malaysia with high population. It may create a problem that we are not willing to meet, traffic jam. By using Touch n Go card, it can reduce the time in queuing for paying toll fee. Besides that, it is useful in taking LRT/KTM. Now we don’t need to buy a ticket and just put your Touch n Go card on the machine. After a sound of “Beep!” then you can continue your journey. There are so many benefit of Touch n Go card, thus I also own a Touch n Go card now.

However, I found some problems after using Touch n Go card. It is not useful in other places except the area of Klang Valley. My father who staying in Johor now has Touch n Go card too. He seldom uses it unless he wants to pay toll fees. Besides that, I cannot use my card in some places due to machine problems. There are few customer service centers besides the areas of KL.

Touch n Go card is a good card for us but it still needs to improve its quality and usefulness. Therefore it is good news that it wants to expand their applications and services towards the retail purchase. It is good strategy to attract more people to be cardholders of Touch n Go card.

For further details or latest news of Touch n Go card, go to
http://www.touchngo.com.my/
My Ecommerce Blog - http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/

Electronic Currency-DigiCash

DigiCash Inc. was a pioneering electronic currency corporation founded by David Chaum in 1990. DigiCash transactions were unique in that were anonymous due to number cryptographic protocols developed by its founder. DigiCash declared bankruptcy in 1998, and subsequently sold its assets to ecash Techologies, another digital currency company which was acquired by InfoSpace on Feb, 19, 2002.

There were some reasons I searching on the internet DigiCash failed:

DigiCash is the techno-determinist view, more fashionable version according to which technology is developing according to some inherent, independent route. Thus, DigiCash was too good a technology, it did not wish it to be used by certain people and they refused, different to the requests of the banks, to allow accountless operation. This meant that to use DigiCash effectively, everyone has to have an account with a DigiCash supporting bank. This disadvantaged the customers of the privacy DigiCash was supposed to provide and created simulated to people who wished to use DigiCash.

Furthermore, DigiCash was too good a technology, too high-tech and over-developed. When it encountered real on-line behaviour this made it impossible to change the technology to reflect those different interests, not because it wasn't good enough, but because it was so well constructed that nobody dared to use with it.

Many of the major new technologies have undergone series of deep changes under the influence of multiple non-technical and just think of history. But, the micro-payments are being promoted by IBM and Digital/Compaq, companies that can also mobilize very significant resources. By the time when these technologies appear on the 'market' most of the major decisions will already been made.

Phishing: Examples and its prevention methods

Phishing is act of sending an e-mail to a user untruly claiming to be an established lawful enterprise in an attempt to scam the user private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit 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 lawful organization already has. However, the web site is false and set up only to steal the user’s information.

Phishing examples: PayPal

An example of a phishing e-mail targeted at PayPal users.

PayPal phishing attempt can be notice by the spelling mistakes in the e-mail and IP address in the link which is the visible in the tooltip under yellow box. Another clue is lack of personal greeting, even though the company personal details would not be security of legality. Other signs are misspellings of simple words and threat of consequences such as account suspension if recipient fails to fulfill the message requests.

Preventions:

Social responses

By training people to recognize phishing attempts and to deal with them such as in education where training provides directs feedback. To avoid phishing attempts, people can slightly modify their browsing habits such as when contacted about an account needing to verified, it is wise able to contact the company. Almost all legal e-mail messages from companies to their customers contain an item of information that is not readily available to phishes. For example, PayPal always address their customers by their username in e-mails.

Website forgery

Some phishing scams uses JavaScript instructions to change the address bar. This can be done either placing a picture of a legitimate URL over the address bar or by closing original address bar and open new one with legitimate URL.

Besides, attacker can use flaws in trusted website’s own scripts. This type of attack is known as cross-site scripting. They direct user to sign in at their bank or services own web page where whole from web address to security certificates appears correct.

Augmenting password logins

Furthermore, to prevent phishing transaction numbers (TANs) is to combine each TAN with “lock number”. The bank server sends the lock number as a challenge, and user provides matching TAN as response. Server selects key-lock pair randomly from the list to prevent obtains two repeated TANs. Lock number are not sequential, so phishers can only guess correct numbers.

Threat of Online Security:How Safe is our data?

Many people, known as Hackers, want nothing more than to break through ours computer security and expose the sensitive information. With widespread use of personal computers, the pool for "hackers" to target grows every day. We hear about worldwide computer Virus, Trojan, or Worm wreaking havoc on machines across the globe.
For Examlple:
The mail attacker - David L. Smith
Smith was the writer of the Melissa Worm, which in 1999 became the first major e-mail macro virus. He deliberately posted an infected document to an alt.sex usenet newsgroup from a stolen AOL address. The worm, believed to be named after a stripper he knew in Florida, forwarded itself to the first 50 accessible addresses in Microsoft Outlook address books.
Companies like Microsoft, Intel, Lockheed Martin and Lucent Technologies were believed to have had to shut down their email gateways due to the large amount of email the virus was generating. In his federal plea, he acknowledged that he cost caused more than $80 million to North American business, and was sentenced to 20 months in jail.
The Canadian teen – MafiaBoy
MafiaBoy was the alias for a 15-year old Canadian boy who launched a denial-of-service attack that crippled sites such as Amazon, Dell, eBay eBay and Yahoo in 2000, which led to an estimated $1.7 billion cost in damages. The affected sites were bombarded with thousands of simultaneous messages, preventing users from accessing for up to five hours.
Although by Canadian law his name was not released by authorities, media outlets later revealed that his name was Mike Calce. Courts sentenced him to eight months custody in a youth detention centre.
There have have many cases that we can found in internet. How our safe is our data?Even though the large international companies have compactness security system but they still the threats of online security problem there. Thus, as we know that how safety our data.........

Protect our personal/financial data now

How many day you can live without computer or internet? Nowadays, computer and internet have already become a necessary part of our life. It seems that everything relies on computer and internet now such as communication, entertainment and business transactions. Therefore, a lot of our personal data (passwords, records or confidential information) are stored either on our own computer or on someone else’s system. Nobody can guarantee that these data can be stored safely as there are many problem of cyber security now. Have you heard the news about credit card numbers or personal data was stolen by outsider? If you don’t want to be one of the victims of these cases, here are some steps we found from website that can help us to protect our data:

1. Use a strong password to protect access to your data.
2. Use and maintain anti-virus software/spyware and a firewall.
3. Regularly scan your computer and keep software up to date.
4. Avoid unused software programs
5. Dispose of sensitive information properly.

Want to know more? Go to HERE for further information.

Besides above steps, we can provide some tips that based on our experiences. Set a new password regularly for accessing your own computer. Some people like to save their password in computer such as msn password It create a risk that other people can sign in your msn and chat with your friends. Next, do not open or reply the unknown email, website or any online request. These requests might contain some virus/ Trojans that disclose your personal data to someone else. In addition, do not tell any password (e.g. Credit card password) to your friends through internet.

This is our tips, how about you?
Do you have any good tips in protecting our personal/financial data? Tell us ~

Few months ago, there is a big news which happened in Hong Kong entertainment industry. A famous celebrity, Edison Chen’s personal data was stolen by someone else and uploaded it to internet. According to the news, Edison Chen saved his personal data in his computer. One day his computer had some problems and he sent it to the computer shop for repairing. The computer shop’s worker found those data and copied it and uploaded to internet. There is a problem here, how we can protect our personal data when we want to repaired our computer? Our answer is:

DO NOT SAVE ANY CONFIDENTIAL DATA IN OUR COMPUTER!
(^^)

History and Evoluation of E-commerce

The origin of commerce by exchanging goods, now commerce is a basic activity of goods trading and buying in everyday life. Entering into the electronic era, the way individuals and organizations do business and undertake commercial transactions have been changed.The emergence of electronic commerce started in the early 1970s with the earliest is technology electronic interchange (EDI) was introduced.
During the 1990s, the Internet was opened for commercial use; it was also the period that users started to participate in World Wide Web (WWW), and the phenomenon of rapid personal computer (PCs) usage growth. Due to the rapid expansion of the WWW network; e-commerce software; and the peer business competitions, large number of dot-coms and Internet starts-ups appeared. Integrated with the commercialization of the Internet, Web invention, and PC networks these three important factors made electronic commerce possible and successful.
Today the largest electronic commerce is Business-to-Business (B2B). Businesses involved in B2B sell their goods to other businesses.Other varieties growing today include Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) where consumers sell to each other, for example through auction sites. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) is another form of e-commerce that allows users to share resources and files directly.
History of ecommerce is a history of a new, virtual world which is evolving according to the customer advantage. All the tasks, letters, messages and data transferred within a flick of a second at any place no matter how far or how near. This all was impossible even for a thought or a dream, for things to be like that just a few years ago. It is a world which we are all building together brick by brick, laying a secure foundation for the future generations.

3rd party certification programme in Malaysia

Certification Programme is performed by the third party in order to verify and authenticate the web site.
VeriSign and MSC Trustgate are two popular 3rd party Certificate Programme.

VeriSign is a truster provider of internet infrastructure services for digital world. VeriSign offerings included SSL, SSL Certificate, digital content solutions, Extended Validition, two-factor authentication, identity protection, managed network security, public key infrastructure (PKI), security consulting, information management, and solution for intelligent communication and content.
Now, Internet Users also benefit from VeriSign EV SSL Protection as Mozilla Launches Firefox 3. When visit a site protected by VeriSign EV SSL Certificates, the "Site Identity" button attached to the location bar changes color to indicate the level of identity information provided, offering immediate reassurance that they've reached a site whose authenticity has or has not been verified by VeriSign. By deploying VeriSign EV SSL Certificates, online banks, retailers and other businesses help build trust and confidence among consumers by offering them immediate and visible assurance that they are dealing with reputable e-commerce sites. ----->

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0407512.htm

MSC Trustgate.com was established in 1999 as a licensed Certification Authority (CA) in Malaysia under the Digital Signature Act 1997 . It provide security solutions and trusted services to help companies build a secure network and application infrastructure for their electronic transactions and communications over the network.
Besides that, it also develop E-banking Security Deployment, E-procurement Integration, User Authentication and Customer Clearance Approval System,PKI. ---->

http://www.trademal.com/global/index.php/id/17463/MSC_Trustgate_com_Sdn_Bhd/index.html

In my opinion, 3rd party certification programme can help us identify which one is fake or true and it will increase the confidence when customer surfing the website. Customers also can trust the website and give the relevant or confidential information to the authority website as compare with those no such thing like that. Not only protect customers, but the company also need to protect themselves by retain their customers.

self introduction...

Name: Jacqueline
Address: Cypress, Sg. Long, Kajang
Date of Birth: 27 September 1985
Occupation: Student
College/ University: Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman
Hobbies: Watch Television, Shopping, Eating


Hi! Above is my personnel particular. This blog are created due to our E-commerce assignment. For the following weeks, there will be updates in this blog. Hopefully, can score high mark in this subject but I think it’s quite difficult because this subject is a very hard subject for me.

The top five website i visit are:-
(1) Google
(2) Yahoo!
(3) Friendster
(4) Youtube
(5) UTAR


"Loving yourself" may sound like two very simple words. How difficult can it get?

"Self love" is not selfishness. It's fundamental loving yourself is necessary and crucial in order for u to love others. If you hold back from yourself, you cannot spend the joy to those around you. Sometimes, it help us become more philanthropic. We need to understand the difference between loving yourself and being self-centered. When you love yourself, you're in harmony with yourself. You tend to give more and consider others' well-being and interest..
Loving yourself means confidence and people love that. Learn to appreciate your distinctive qualities and people will flock to you instinctively. You will feel more better about yourself when there is self-love, there is security and confidence. When you are less accepting and angry, you tend to be more judgmental and vulnerable.
Improve ourselves helps us to take care of ourselves better. Our relationships with our family and friends will be the better for it as well. Don’t you hope to have a more fulfilled life for your future? Fill your mind with positive thoughts about yourself. The thoughts we hold in our minds are what govern us.. "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve well"

An example of an E-commerce failure and its causes

eToys.com started from 1997 to 2001. The company raised $166 million in a May 1999 IPO, but in the course of 16 months, its stock went from a high of $84 per share in October 1999 to a low of just 9 cents per share in February 2001.
There are several causes of failure in eToys. One of the failures is technology which has the ability to win other competitors in the same field. This is due to technology are improving tremendous quickly.
Another cause is inadequate reserve cash, where need to calculate before a business is start. It is important to identify the demand and need of consumers. Besides, also need to understand the market demand and needs of consumers. Hence, to get professional advice of business is advisable.
However, pricing also play an important role when the price is too high there will be low number of customers. Besides, the needs to know the price of products those customers are willing to pay for.
Furthermore, the failure are spending millions on advertising where have outweighed company’s income. Company should be aware of fine line between effective advertising and over advertising. There are many methods to produce great and minimum cost advertising such as brochures, catalogs, direct mail, and web site.

Revenue Model

Revenue model is description of how the company or an E-commerce project will earn revenue. It is include 5 models such as sales revenue model, transaction fees model, subscription fees, advertising model, and affiliate model.

Sales revenue model is companies generate revenue from selling merchandise on their web site of from providing a service.
Transaction fees is company receives a commission based on the volume of transaction made.
Subscription fees are customers pay a fixed amount, usually monthly, to get some type of service. Fee from subscribers is in exchange for access to content or service.
Advertising fees is companies charge others for allowing them to place a banner on their sites.
Affiliate fees are companies receive commissions for referring customers to other Web sites.

Now, let me compare each revenue model for Google, eBay, and Amazon.com.

Sales Revenue Model: The main representative is Amazon.com.
The major revenue of Amazon.com is selling book, CDs, DVDs, software and so on. Amazon.com reported over 1.3 million sellers sold products through Amazon's worldwide web sites in 2007. Not only Amazon.com, eBay also make revenue through sales revenue model as well. However, Google seldom involve in such model as it major business is search engines.

Transaction Fees Model: eBay is classical example for this model.
eBay is platform let people buy and sell their goods through their website. It become the intermediate in this trade and received transaction fee between them. Amazon.com and Google not many this kind of revenue compare with eBay.

Subscription Fees Model: These three companies all got this kind of model. The following link is can let u see how they can earn this revenue.
eBay
Amazon.com
Google

Advertising Fees Model: it is Google major revenue sources.
Almost 99% sources revenue of Google is advertising fees, such as Google AdWords and Google Adsense.

Clickriver Ads can place advertisement on the Amazon.com

Same as the Amazon.com, eBay also got some this kind of model.

Affiliate Fees Model: Pay-Per-Click is most popular that Google use it generates revenue. As compare with eBay and Amazon, Google also very famous in this. Nowadays, affiliate program is also become more popular compare with advertising as it also part of the advertising. eBay and Amazon trend to become most using it as well.

Example of an E-commerce success and its cause: Amazon.com.

Is there anyone has the experiences of online shopping or selling products through internet? Online shopping brings a lot of convenience to the consumers. In Malaysia, more and more people start to purchase something online such as clothes, electronic products or even pets. Therefore you should not be strange about this E-Commerce company: Amazon.com, Inc.

As we know, people called Amazon.com as Titans of E-Commence which together with eBay. Amazon.com, Inc was founded by Jeff Bezoz in 1994, and launched online in 1995.

Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, but it offers "Earth's Biggest Selection" of nearly everything today. it has 35 million customers and lists million of different items in categories such as electronic product, kitchen and housewares, music CDs, DVD, computer software, food ,toys, etc. Furthermore, it has established separate websites in United Kingdom, France, China and Japan.

In order to let consumers get more information of the products, Amazon.com provides a good feature which allows the users to submit reviews and comments to the
web pages of each product. The users can also rate the product on a rating scale from one to five stars.

Besides that, Amazon.com provides “Search inside the books” which allows consumers to search the book that fulfill their requirement from around 250,000 books in the program.

On the other hand, Amazon’s worldwide sites allow the internet user to sell their product online. Unlike eBay/ Paypal, Amazon sellers do not have to maintain separate payment accounts because all payments and payment security are handled by Amazon.com itself.

Yup, the Father’s Day is coming soon. Did you buy any gift to your dearest father?
Let’s go to for our father’s day gift now!

Self-Introduction

Name : Yow Mei Fong Nickname: May
Age : 21 years old
Birthday : 23 April
Horoscope : Taurus
Address : Cypress- C2G1
Hometown : Pandan Indah , KL
Occupation : Student
School/Collage : University Tunku Abdul Rahman
Semester : Year 3 semester 1
Hobbies & Interest : Sleeping , Watch Drama (Taiwanese& Hong Kong)
Favorite Foods : Any foods can eat..
Favorite Animals : Hamster & Dog

Hello!Above are some information let all of u know about me...
Create this blog purpose is doing my E-Commerce assignment in group.I also will always write some thing in weeks.

The top five i visit website :
(1) Yahoo- Checking e-mail, reply& forword message and searching information regard with assignment
(2) Google-Searching information and Journal
(3) Friendster-Edit Profile, view message and view friend profit
(4) Xunlei - Watch entertainment news and drama
(5) Utar- checking information and time table

2008, I in utar Y3S1 ...last year in university life, sometime may feel stressful in study life,assignment, mid-term and final...But i will try to reduce it. When i free i will call my friend to go out shopping and "minum tea", sleeping and playing game....haha! this all i can doing in sungai long. I hope everyone can be happy and healthy. Happiness always beside me ^_^

Introduction

Hello, my name is Nai Jian Lin...
I come from Permas Jaya, Johor Bahru....
I study in UTAR...

Actually my hobby is sleeping...haha....but I also like to read novel..such as Giddens and JHT when i am free.

My favorite animal is dog...because i like Snoopy...
I am a lazy girl...because i don't like to think and talk very much...
But i like to read other people's blog...haha...they always write somethings very funny and their experience...
I also chatting with my friends through MSN, blogging, watching drama and PTT...

The top five website i visit are...
1. Friendster - This website can let me know about my friends' recent situation those go oversea study and can see many friends' photo at there.
2. Youtube - My brother got introduce my funny and amazing video so i like to visit youtube.
3. Google - I like to find some information from the Google when i am doing assignment and homework.
4. http://www.wretch.cc/blog/shivia - She is a singer from Taiwan, she is very funny and candour girl. I like to see her article which are sharing her experience and feeling.
5. Blogger - Haha...my friends got set up their blog at there so always visit it.

Now...last year study in UTAR, i feel this is very unbelievable...haha...and now i am 21 years old...that mean i am grow and i want to face every challenges by myself...
I wish i can do it...and do until better...

Happy Day~~~

Self-introduction~

hi... how are you there? Hope that all of you can enjoy while reading this blog.
Actually, this blog is created due to OUR assignment.
wait .... OUR ? yes~ that is right...
this blog is created by 3 person: May, Lynn and me from UTAR
(University Tunku Abdul Rahman)~
Just like what i mentioned just now, this is requirement of our E-commerce assignment,
Therefore, We will write some posts about E-commerce every week from now.

Ya.. my name is chong kai xuan. You can call me ah Xuan.
Or u can call me Burger. dun ask me why, i m also the person who wan to know the answer about that. XDD
I come from Layang-layang, a small town in Johor.

My hobby is surfing in the internet.
I like to read everything in the internet such as forum, blog.
I also like to chat with people, play game, read latest news of our country and latest comics~
Well, the top 5 websites that i visited the most are:
Friendster - i can see many pretty photos of my friends in friendster. It makes me know more about my friends.
Facebook - i like this website because it contain different kind of interesting functions such as adopting a pet, selling and buying your friends as your items, or sending some virtual gifts to your best friend.
JBtalks - this is a forum not only for citizen of johor bahru, but also the all citizen of Malaysia.
Blogger.com - Yup, i have a lot of friends set up their personal blog from here.
Google- haha... it is a good search engine for me while i am doing my assignment.

As a year 3 student, my student life just like a busy bee.
Sometimes, i may feel stressful about that.
But i have promised that, no matter how hard the life is, i have to keep smiling.
So, i wish that this can help me to face every challenge bravely.
And it can help You too.

Have a nice day~