Life Through MY EYES

MIS and MIS750 of UiTM had successfully created a big impact on me.  Since beginning of this class, I cannot stop but only excited to find IT / MIS related news.  Yesterday, I read 2 newspaper articles which I found very enlightening and I want to share the joy with all of you.

ARTICLE 1
Title: Single mums pick up ICT know-how, NST, November 7,2011. Page 11

A group of participants (96 single mother and 215 orphans) have been invited to attend one-day workshop on Information and communication technology, organised by University Malaysia Pahang (UMP) in Kuantan.  Many of them are entrepreneur and small business owner. It is a success.  Most of the participants went home with the new knowledge that they can use to explore and prosper their business.  One particular statement from a 50-year old participant that touch my heart is " It is not true that we are not interested in ICT. The reason many of us are not ICT-literate is that we never had the opportunity to learn".  Kudos to UMP and their partners for changing somebody's live. 

ARTICLE 2
Title: Blog of teaching experiences, NST, November 7,2011. Page 13, Life and Times.
Life through my eyes.....this is a title of a book by Muhammad Hafiz Ismail, a teacher in Sekolah Kampung Kenang, a remote orang asli settlement in Kuala Kangsar, Perak.  It's all started when he created a blog (with the same title - despite all odds) as he was new with the remote environment and need to channel his observation and experience.  I read the articles with nothing but amazement to this 25 year old teacher. His `diary' turn to be an award wining blog coveted Prime Minister award at MSC APICTA 2011 recently.  His online reflections not only ramblings about his life in the remote settlement but also a sharing platform for creative teaching methods that he invented to make his classroom a fun learning playground for his students ( he is such a creative teacher). Another feather to his hat, his followers are not just Malaysian but also from Britain, USA, Australia and Africa. You make Malaysia proud Hafiz....Bravo !!!!
To visit Muhammad Hafiz blog, please visit:
www.apistakkisah.blogspot.com


MY TAKE
This blog (MIS and ME) is not my temporary blog, this  blog is here to stay.  

P.S: Dr Norzaidi, salute to you !!!... for `breaking' my fear in ICT.

ONLINE SHOPPING - mudah.com

Afternoon guys!  Here I am and another entry....just to share my experience on online shopping.  I am not sure how many of you know about mudah.com.  Me, i found the website about 6 years ago, when I was thinking of selling a property. It was introduce by a brother in-law.  When I clicked to the website, I found the website as a very `customer friendly' website.  The search was made simple and quick.  They have almost everything that a person need under the sky, from a RM1 pearl grass to million ringgit property or even business outfit.  

mudah.com - virtual hypermarket

What I am interested about mudah.com is not just the variety of items you can find there, but also the business concept adopted.  Mudah.com is a platform for anybody to advertise items for sale, wanted or even announcement. It is a huge virtual hypermarket advertisement with no commission or fee attached.  The purchaser can contact the seller direct and lock the deal themselves.   Until now, mudah.com is still my favourite website, not for the urge to shop but sometimes to see the variety of items on sale.

PS: This is not a marketing campaign on mudah.com though.

MY TAKE

On mudah.com: Over the years, I have seen the website progressed to even `friendlier' with better search facilities.  The categories of items are also expanding. But, hey...take a look !  U may see my handphone number on the seller's details..... 

On online shopping experience: I have been a customer to online shopping for quite a while. Items that I normally purchase online are: airplane ticket (mostly Airasia), books (amazon.com, mph.com - for my daughter), cinema tickets ( family session), train tickets (Eurostars,RailEurope), rent-a-car and accommodation.  All the while, my online purchases was pretty much plain sailing except one.  My only bad experience was from car renting service, AVIS in Paris last February.  I was signing my credit card based on agreed fee (4-days rental, about RM 1,500) but when I received my credit card bill back in Malaysia next 1 month, it was recorded that AVIS actually charged me for almost RM5,000. I was shocked and sad. Luckily I had the copy of the rental agreement intact and wrote the AVIS headquarter in London.  The case took almost 3 months to settle and I finally got back my RM3,500 reverted to my credit card with an official apology note from AVIS London.  Lesson learned - I may have been a victim of online shopping but trusting only to company with credible background save me.  Lucky it was AVIS. I was told  that the `mistake' happened at the handling office in Orly airport Paris.

IT / MIS around ME

MIS 750 has changed me....in a positive way.  I have become `IT / MIS sensitive ' person.  The whole week of this week saw me reading newspaper with IT/MIS as my special interest.  This morning I saw another comment by a writer in Utusan Malaysia about a group of lawyer using facebook to share their syariah court case material with discredit note on the judges.  Social network has been used to expose private and confidential details of clients and the case.  Some lawyers have expressed their concern on this trend which to them is unethical.  Integrity play a very important role here. If a lawyer cannot hold the integrity, who else can we trust?

MY NEW INITIATIVE

CIDB Holdings Homepage

This morning I was talking to our company's IT vendor. I have requested the company to quote me the documentation exercise of all IT/MIS systems that we have in office.  
My employer has established some kind of IT / MIS initiative in mostly piece meal basis.  We have biometric entrance cum attendance  system in-place just 2 months ago, MYOB accounting system and intranet. We have even developed a Seminar Registration System (we conducted many in-house events).  But all this while, we have never documented any of this initiatives and that is exactly what I want to do immediately.

I am also doing some research on IT / IS securities for our group presentation which schedule this 20 November.  I am now becoming more concern with my company's information security and want to ensure that we are well protected.  The last big `system crash' that we have experienced was in 2004 when a virus that rename most of the files in our file server and made all files with 0 bytes. We installed MS ISA firewall 2004 to ensure the incidents will not recur. The 2nd attack we experienced is to our e-mail server in 2006.  This spamming congested the server.  It has restricted access to server, network access becoming very slow and our e-mail has been blacklisted.  To counter this problem, we authenticated user to the server and since then, we have not experience any major problem to our IT system anymore (thank you Rizal from Rsystect that explained the situation to me this morning).

MY TAKE
MIS 750 has changed me. I like to announce that I am now a blogger. I can understand MIS better and definitely not 'afraid' of IT anymore. You will see me more, certainly!

ps: Dr Norzaidi, thank you for your easy-casual way of teaching MIS. You make MIS750 sound less intimidating and scary.