iStorez, Personalized Your Own Online Shopping

For the past years, i've been purchasing products online, normally from eBay.com. It is a really interesting experience. Seeing the growth of eBay, i do think that making business online is going to increase my pocket money. Other than trying to sell products in blog, such as Pinkylixiouz and Cherry Parlour, Kriyari, Inc., the creator of a Web 2.0 storefront network, introduced their latest online retailr project, the iStorez, where it provides a unique personalized shopping service.

Image Source: iStorez
www.istorez.com

In the iStorez's homepage, they define that "Think of a glossy magazine featuring 1000s of current deals and trends directly from top brands and stores. only this time it's online, on-demand and one-click away from you. Think of a storefront as an extension of a retails store's website. It is similar to the physical store window displays that you see as you walk through a mall. At iStorez, you can browse 1000s of storefronts from 100s of stores without ever leaving your warm chair and hot cup of coffee. And iStorez always presents the most relevant and newest storefronts based on what you are looking for. "

The main concept behind this iStorez is that it offers an "opt-in, opt-out" shopping services, not only for the seller and also for the shoppers. iStorez offers a wild range of services such as:

• Discover cool or trendy products
• Find the latest product releases or brands
• Shop from a wide variety of top stores
• Browse other shoppers' personlized storefronts.
  

iStorez, like the Amazon.com and eBay.com, one thing that differ the iStorez from other online purchasing site is that it allows shoppers and merchants to create and also customize their storefront. Unlike the other online purchasing site, users will use the pre-defined storefront by the site.

Anand Jagannathan, CEO of the Kriyari, Inc., told the reporters that "iStorez combines a 'patent in process' storefront creation engine with Web 2.0 technologies to deliver continually fresh, timely and relevant content for shoppers. What that really means is shoppers no longer have to sign up for email newsletters to find out about promotions, or search their in-box for what's new or hunt across the Internet for special coupons! An added plus is that many of our promotions are exclusive and not generally available on other sites. For those who read in bullets, iStorez gives you:

• Recency: only see what's current, not last year's trends and expired promotions
• Relevance: only see what you asked for, not thousands of product listings
• Personalization: only see content from your favourite stores, not everone's"

For more information regarding iStorez, you can read the interviews between the CEO with the reporters from eCopt.

New Way for Business Bloggers

While i was thinking a new topic for this blog, i came across an article, with the topic "Why Business Bloggers are Twittering". Blogging, it is not only for the younger group of the internet users to share their thought. Including my G53DDB coursework, i'm actually writing a blog that regarding business technology. Even in the business world, there are business bloggers who blog about their thought in doing business, how to increase their business and perhaps, way of earning more money. Blogging is a new trend. However, sometimes all these business blogs can be lengthy, and not everyone will like to spend time in reading some irrelevant news.

Thus, Twitter, a new business blog is introduced. Twitter is a new service that allows friends, family and also co-workers to communicate and stay connected with each other through the exchange of quick, frequent answers. Twitter is more or less like a social network, where you can get connected with friends and co-workers. In here, you can even share your thoughts of problems with other twitter users. One advantage of this Twitter is that, you can always stay connected to your friends and know what are they doing recently. Twitter users can even set a quiet times for themselves if they wish not to be interrupted but at the same time keeping themselves updated with the news.

Instead of writing a long post in the blog, Twitter is a solution where business bloggers can write an instant messages. You can even use it as a social network to connect with other business partners. A poll has been conducted to get the percentage how people, especially the business bloggers, to use the Twitter. The top three uses are as below:

• Sharing links to items of interest to your network (34%)
• Networking for new contacts (18%)
• Reinforcing current network contacts (16%)

But, does this mean that blogging will be less popular in the coming years with the growth in the usage of Twitter? For my own perception, i do think that for some certain reasons, Twitter might be able to take over the blogger. But somehow, the conventional way of sharing ideas and allow people to share their thoughts through blogging is still an efficient way. At least, for my own-self, i do prefer writing blog to share my thought of the day rather than writing only a short messages which cannot be fully carry out the meaning or thought that i wanted to share.

I suggested that, if Twitter, social network that can be combined with blogger system, it will increase and attract more business bloggers to use it to connect with other business partner and also share their thoughts.

IBM Hit with $6 Million Software Fraud Suit

On March 10, 2008, internet retailer Harry and David claimed that IBM, sold it e-commerce software that violated other companies' patents but then IBM refused to back the merchant when those companies being sued or complained to IBM. Harry and David also claimed that IBM knew that the software that it sold had already been discovered to violate patents help by the NCR and Charles Hill & Associates.

The software that IBM sold includes a version 5.6 of IBM Websphere Commerce, together with the earlier version of it. This software provides numerous tools that businesses can adopt and use to create websites and transact sales over the Internet. It is a software that helps in open the route for e-commerce for a company. Over this issue, Harry and David is seeking a minimum of $6 million in costs and damages from IBM for alleged fraud and breach of contract.

The problems lie between this issue is that, after Harry and David purchased the software, only the NCR notified them that the software had been violated the NEC patents. For this, Harry and David also being sued for patent infringement by Charles Hill in June of 2007.

After the incident, IBM is still market the e-commerce programs to the general public without informing the public about the violation of patent liability issues. For a big and international company like IBM, this is an irresponsible act. Before selling or publishing the software, they should have obtain agreement from the necessary parties. Even so, they should not have still market it to the public when they found out that their software actually violate the patents of NCR.

The act of irresponsible not only will affect the customers, by involving them in a law suit, it will also affect the reputation of IBM. I totally agree that Harry and David should sue the company for causing them involved in a law suit. What is your opinion then?

Weaknesses In Business Intelligence and Solutions

On 23 October 2007, CIO posted an article entitled "Three Weaknesses in Business Intelligence Today". In the article, they pointed out some issues regarding Business Intelligence (BI). The issues are such as below:

• BI tools provide out of date information.
  
• BI tools fail to identify process problems.
• BI tools can't be used as predictors.
  

For more information regarding the article, you can click on this link to read about it.

Before we look into the weaknesses and solutions, what is Business Intelligence actually? According to Wikipedia.com, BI refers to "technologies, applications and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information and also sometimes to the information itself". The main purpose of business intelligence is to help the company in decision making. More history related to business intelligence can be read from here.

Despite the importance of business intelligence in helping to company in decision making, let us look deep into the problems that lies behind this issue. Firstly, business intelligence tools provide out-of-date information. To compete with competitors in the business world, it is important that the company gain the first hand information or the latest information regarding the market trend or what is happening in the market now. Thus, the company would be able to come out with the best solution and handle or face the newest market trend and continue to compete with competitors. However, sometimes business intelligence tools will provide the company with out-of-date information and thus the company would not be able to know what's the newest market trend.

Other than that, BI tools sometimes also fail to identify the process problems that lie in between the business process where the company would not able to come out with the best solutions to handle all these problems. Company which integrated business intelligence in their business process can't use BI tools as the trend predictors as BI tools sometimes can provide irrelevant information.

Thus, how can we actually overcome these problems since more and more companies rely on the BI tools and do not realize all these problems behind it? Firstly, try to implements more than one BI tools in the company and look for a more user-friendly BI tools to implement. For example, if one of the BI tools provide irrelevant information, the company will always have the second chance to look for other tools that implemented in the system for more relevant and up-to-date information. Company can consider solutions such as ERP and CRM. These tools will help to improve the services of the company. Other than that, company can consider to have BI accessed through a third party such as having some software as a service BI.

Company can also consider to implement Web 2.0 into their current BI tools. Web 2.0 can be used as a tool to boost the efforts of BI. More information regarding Web 2.0 can be read from here. Other than that, company can consider an operational business intelligence other than having a traditional BI tools implemented in the company. Rather than having all the information gathered by the BI tools, some of the information might be irrelevant for the company, company can always look for data generated by business processes that lend themselves to automated analysis and even actions taken on the basis of that analysis by using the operational business intelligence. Thus, the company can have more up-to-date or even first-hand information.

Can M-Commerce Ever Take Over E-Commerce?

Google Android, which was released by the Mobile Consumer Lab and Mind Commerce, claimed that they can re-create the success of Japan's "Wireless Ecosystem" model within the context and realities of international mobile markets. It claims that it can compete some other platforms such as Symbian, Windows Mobile and MontaVista. However, how many of us do really rely on a mobile phone to carry out business by using wireless or bluetooth or even 3G? Not to mention whether Google Android will be successfully accomplishing the goal by mid-2008 or not.

source from: youtube.com
http://youtube.com/watch?v=lWJ9xW4Wm-k

What makes e-commerce through mobile phone still not popular in the e-commerce world? Will it be able to compete with E-Commerce and overtake the E-Commerce, becoming the newest business trend around the world?

From my opinion, i do believe that people nowadays still rely much on the computer, or perhaps, they are more comfortable to be sitting in front of the computer, where they can check on their business status every minute and every moment while for mobile phone, only certain places where 3G or wireless is available, they can go online to check for their business status. It is less flexible and less convenient.

Another problem is the screen size of the mobile phone. How many percent of the mobile users will actually browse through some website through a small scre en of their mobile phone? Even with the screen size of a PDA's, it is still comfortable to look at the computer monitor. Survey had been carried out on how mobile user think about having WAP and results are shown below.

source: Network World Inc.
http://www.networkworld.com/ecomm2001/mcom/mcom.html

source: Network World Inc.
http://www.networkworld.com/ecomm2001/mcom/mcom.html

However, M-Commerce does have some advantages over the E-Commerce. For example, mobile ticketing can be carried anywhere with only one click on the mobile phone. Mobile also makes payment and banking system easier over the network as long as user can access to the network. With more mobile softwares introduce in the market, i personally do think that M-Commerce will be a successful in the coming years and it might take over the E-Commerce as well. So how do you think bout that statement?