News like YouTube sold for 1.6 billion USD to Google, eBay acquired Skype for 2.6 billion often get all of us so excited and usually make us start to wonder about how we too can start something similar. Incidentally, AirAsia with their online booking system, grew their flight business continuously in the last 5 years.

AirAsia outsourced their booking engine to a third party solution provider, but we’ve never heard Larry of Google or Steve Chen of YouTube engaged similar strategy to develop the online business for them. Instead, their solution is “home-brewed”.

This is because AirAsia’s core business is to provide affordable flight (Everyone Can Fly!) and the booking engine is just a medium for the public to book their tickets. No matter how well they design the entire booking system, it is more important to have a well managed airline system. Outsourcing the ticket booking system can allow Tony to concentrate more on the airline business itself.

So, let’s look at a scenario here where Ah Beng wants to build a second eBay.

He proposed to us that he wants to build a platform like eBay and then asked us for a full-fledge proposal of the entire system. These people either do not understand what it cost to build a successful online business and instead of them providing us the specifications, they are asking us to do it for them. It’s like asking the architect to find me a good location for my next restaurant.

You might ask then, what kind of services we provide, since we don’t help people build their second eBay?

After Ah Beng realized how a second ebay wouldn’t work as he’d planned, he then started his own restaurant business in Klang Valley. Business grew by leaps and bounds. Reservations of table through the receptionist became a bottleneck with the increment of business volume. He then came to us again after realizing how an online reservation system can help him clear the bottleneck and at the same time how he can use the online medium to expand his market reach.

After outsourcing his entire online presence to us, Ah Beng can then continue to concentrate on his restaurant business, where his expertise lies in. From this experience, Ah Beng realized that a successful online strategy is very much like a good restaurant, where the owner must himself understand how the restaurant business works.

Of late, we have been getting more and more requests to help our clients set up a blog. There is no denying that blogs are quickly dominating the cyberspace; even the word “blog” itself became Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary’s Word of the Year for year 2004. The word “blog” originated from two words, namely “web” and “log”. Putting them together yields “weblog”. These days “blog” is more commonly used.

The beauty of blogs is that it allows you to update your site much more easily. A blog publishing tool helps you to quickly update your contents, without the need for you to get your hands dirty fiddling with html codes all the time. Like conventional log books and diaries, blogs allow you to archive your older contents in chronological order. At any time you wish to view an older content, you can do so by browsing or simply searching the archives.

The Building Blocks of a Blog

Your archives are the ‘building blocks’ of your blog. Readers can easily tell if yours is new blog or an old blog from the date the first post was published. There is rarely a need for one to delete blog entries unless really necessary - for example, your blog has offensive contents and you run into some problems with the authorities.

Managing Your Site

As far as content management is concerned, rest assured that your site is in good hands. Various blog publishing software are available on the internet but they’re all similar in one way or another. Wordpress, Movable Type, LiveJournal, Xanga and Blogspot are some examples. The booming of blogs was largely contributed by the emergence of free blog hosting providers such as Blogspot, Xanga and Blogdrive. However, free hosting usually means limited customization and personalization options, including having your own domain (such as http://www.<YourName>.com).

On the other hand, for those who want full control over their blog and those who wish to set up a corporate blog for example, a paid hosting is favorable. Corporate blogging is also quickly picking up pace because it provides a less-formal approach to delivering information and a unique reader-writer interaction. A reader who has something to add on to a particular blog entry can simply post a comment for it, if the comments feature is enabled.

Blogging Security

To curb spam and unwanted comments, most blog publishing tools allow comment-moderation; whereby a comment is made viewable only after the blog owner has approved it. Also, it is a good practice to not reveal personal information on your blog, such as vehicle registration number, identification numbers and home addresses, because no matter how ‘private’ you claim your blog to be, it is always viewable to virtually anyone who has an internet access.

Readership and Frequency of Updates

A blog comes ‘alive’ only if you maintain it well. By this, I mean your contents should be up-to-date. It is fairly easy to know if a blog has been ‘abandoned’ from the main page. The main page is where the latest blog entry appears and if even the latest entry was posted say, 6 months ago, then the blog is as good as ‘dead’. This is certainly not desirable if you’re trying to attract readership.

‘Frequency of Update’ refers to how often you update your blog. Some blogs are updated daily, some twice daily, and some once weekly. You may not actually need to adhere to a fixed period. However, note that a low frequency of update may result in a decline in readership. On the other hand, too high a frequency could result in the latest entries not having sufficient ‘airtime’. Readers seek information that is new, up-to-date and relevant to them. Fulfilling this criteria coupled with a friendly interface can help build and sustain your readership base.

Blogging Ethics

Bloggers are often likened to journalists. That said, however, information and first-hand news provided by bloggers usually go unfiltered. More people are turning to blogs for latest news but how far are they true? Spreading rumours and lies is deemed inethical. Articles and contents taken from other sources should be rightfully attributed, and credited. Copying others’ work without properly attributing the work to the original author is considered plagiarism, and should be avoided. The least you could do is include a hyperlink to the source from which the content was taken.

Conclusion

Blogging offers you the convenience of publishing your contents without much fuss, and even allows readers to comment on your entries. It does not take a rocket scientist to maintain a blog site either; all you’ve got to do is write your heart out and be heard. Sounds convincing? Hop onto the bandwagon today and experience for yourself the power of blogs!

As you can probably see there are major changes on 1.com.my. Rest assured we are upgrading for a better tomorrow. One of the main goodies in our major upgrade is the new website will feature a new channel where our customers can directly talk to us or give us valuable feedback where we can continue to improve our services and serve them better. We also hope that we can constantly be in touch with our visitors and to encourage a two-way communications, which we believe is an important element in creating a long-lasting relationship.

We invite you to visit our website frequently, or add our site to your RSS feeds to get up-to-date information. We intend for this website to grow and mature over time, and we hope your feedback and suggestion can help us make our website even more useful to you. Let us know what you think!

As much of the site is still undergoing heavy construction, we shall update this news section again once the dust settles down. If there’s anything you hope to see in our website, you can drop a comment or send us a request. No promises that it will be included though :)

We believe in ‘hard work does pay’ phrase. The more we work out, the finer it will get. This is what we have been standing on since the day we took off as the trusted company to build the site for D’RAX Corporation Sdn Bhd, www.draxcorp.com.my. Compiled with innovative ideas and touches of designed, we are proud to present the site to the eyes of you. The main idea of the site is to provide information of the company in a clear-cut design, which combined a simple design with the manipulation of interesting graphics. In order to produce the finest result, research has been done and long-hour discussion has been held. At last, we have came out with concept of weaver bird to resemble the spirit of the company.

Known as the Baya Weaver bird, it is belongs to the family of the weaver bird. Famous of its diligence in building up its home, it is indeed a fascinating bird. Base on its characteristic, the designer team has selected the bird as the main design concept theme for the site. Due to the profile of the company, which involve in decorators, interior and renovation, the perfect match knows it.

The image of the bird crafting it’s nest is chosen by us to show the diligences of the company and the team behind the stage on working out the best to present to its client. Credit should be given to Paul Huang who has successfully captured this wonderful panorama of the bird in Kranji, Singapore. Paul Huang is indeed a talented photographer and with his effort, he has come out with his own website to feature his masterpiece. For those who are interested, you can visit his site at www.naturestops.com.

It is our hope that this site will feature the best combination of information and design to cater your interest.